28/1/21 "WEIR OF HERMISTON" by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Lockdown….. and as much snow and ice in the streets as if Edinburgh were in the Arctic…. 

Lockdown….murky by mid-afternoon and murky till mid-morning…

Lockdown…..your international blogger and influencer is travelling no more… 

But finally a ray of sunshine - a request to be guest blogger at the Monthly Book Group, nowadays Zooming around the world!

Shoosh, the proposer is talking..… 

“I chose to read all the works of RL Stevenson  as a Lockdown project. The Book Group has already tackled Jekyll and Hyde. However, we did not discuss Stevenson’s life, which is so interesting. In his  first  vital years he was much influenced by his nannie and to an extent his father. This produced the Covenanter in him. 

“Then in his youth he blossomed into a Romantic, a Cavalier and a Bohemian. He fell under the spell of an Edinburgh prostitute who then announced that she was about to emigrate to USA .He was bribed by his parents to try a career and was called to the Bar. This got him a period in an artistic community in the Loire valley where he met an American,  Fanny Osbourne. When he got a chance he followed her to her home city, San Francisco. This is covered in his first interesting book. She shook off her husband and temporarily her children and they married and spent an amusing honeymoon on Mount Silverado, again recorded in a book. Then back to Britain , with the Osbourne children. He talked well and built up a group of literary friends including Sir Sidney Colvin who saw what he might be capable of and forced him on. 

“ ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ was a great success but Stevenson and his friends realised it was a detour not a destination. He was commercially successful with ‘Treasure Island’ and his three Jacobite novels. The last, ‘the Master of Ballantrae’ took him nearer to his objective. His poor lungs and addiction to cigarettes led to his emigration to the South Sea Islands where he set up home with the Osbourne entourage and latterly his mother. He wasted time on Island politics but Colvin continued to write urging ambition. ‘St Ives’ was his next book, unfinished but completed much later by another friend. 

Yours truly discreetly opens the five litre box of El Cheapo red cunningly placed just out of sight of the camera….

“Then at last he got stuck  into the novel he had been incubating, ‘Weir of Hermiston’ (1896). He had sketched out the general outline some years earlier and his letters show the development of the book. I find so much in it and I hope you do. 

“The last scene, and the scene before, took Weir to a climax of, as I see it, great drama. He finished, but perhaps he didn’t finish, writing about the meeting of Archie and Kirstie, then he taught his  family some French, had lunch and died. “How can I keep this pitch?” he had written. And he failed, I suppose. His step daughter claimed that he had outlined how the novel was to end. You will I hope have seen this in the editions you have read. But the Osbourne family shared a lust for reflected glory and and did RLS actually know how the drama would end? Does this matter? It should certainly not deflect attention from what he wrote. But as a means of shedding light of the work, it is perhaps justified…”

The proposer was not alone in choosing the complete works of RLS as a lockdown project as, remarkably, another member had done the same. And a third member had read most of what RLS had written, and drew attention to the excellence of his travel writing - such as “The Silverado Squatters” -  as well as the novels. Hermiston, however, was different - much more character-driven, with effort spent on establishing the characters and setting rather than narrative progress.

So the first part of the evening was to assess the unfinished book (or “fragment”, though clocking in at 122 pages), and the second part was to speculate about how the rest  of the novel might have gone.

Most were keen - very keen - on the book. “Superb!”. “Really liked it”. “Characters very strong, plot building well,  and real sense of place”. “It would have been a great novel, but as it stands it is a great fragment”. “Fantastic!”

It was interesting to see Stevenson attempting a “novel for grown-ups” rather than an adventure story, and to see influences not just from Scott but from other major nineteenth century novelists such as Emily Bronte and Thomas Hardy.

Indeed there were was only one of the dozen virtually present who did not have a positive view of the book. He could though see individual aspects of the book that were to be recommended, but would not recommend the book as a whole to someone else. There were too many dense passages that were hard work to wade through.

The use of Scots language attracted quite a bit of comment. For those not brought up in lowland Scotland, the passages in Scots posed an unwelcome problem, only partly relieved by the glossary found in most editions. The lowland Scots present admitted (to the surprise of others) that they did not recognise quite a lot of the words, and pointed out that even Burns had needed to put a glossary into the Kilmarnock edition of his poems (1786). But they understood enough words to be able to sail on picking up the general gist of words they didn’t know. Moreover, they felt the use of Scots - a language rhythmic, onomatopoeic and sometimes violent - gave a good sense of Scottish life at the time. “To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life”.

“Remember, your faither is a hard man, reapin’ where he hasna sowed and gathering’ where he hasna strawed. It’s easy speakin’ but mind! Ye’ll have to look in the gurly face o’m, where it’s ill to look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind me o’ a bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas - we’re a’ safe still, sittin’ quait and crakin’ wi Kirstie in your own town chamber…”

The characters were very well drawn, above all the elder Kirstie. Stevenson indeed seemed to be in love with her, and there was an underlying eroticism in her late night discussions with Archie. Stevenson had married a woman some 20 years older, and had had other relationships with women significantly older than him.

Gosh, refilling my glass already…the wine box makes the process soundless and invisible…

As readers we were shown in depth what Archie and Kirstie senior were thinking and feeling, and a fair amount of what Frank and Kirstie junior were thinking and feeling. However,  Weir of Hermiston was viewed very much externally, with only occasional hints as to what might be going on beneath the hanging judge’s fierce exterior. Perhaps this reflected Stevenson’s own relationship with his father. There was also a distinct narrator in the novel - whose many reflections ranged from the nostalgic to the ironical,  sometimes very funny -  although such a narrator figure was rare for a late nineteenth century novel. “St Ives” also has a narrator, but that is St Ives himself, telling his story in the first person singular.

  

Stevenson’s nostalgia for Scotland while he was overseas in Samoa is very marked in the novel, and shown even in the dedication to his wife:

“I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn

On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again

In my precipitous city beaten bells

Winnow the keen sea wind…”

Indeed all his best novels about Scotland were written while he was abroad.

The sense of place is rendered in fine descriptive writing:

“The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers, and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch…..

…..All beyond and about [Hermiston] is the great field of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship’s rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset….”

Moreover, we had a view on where the place was ( a world first?!). Colvin as editor rejects the idea that the rural action is set in any specific part of southern Scotland, suggesting an amalgam of the Lammermuirs, Glencorse by the Pentland Hills, and in particular Upper Tweeddale.

But he seems unaware that “Cauldstaneslap” Farm, the home of Christina (Kirstie junior) is named after “The Cauldstaneslap”, which is part of the old drove road through the southern Pentlands, and was familiar to the hill-walkers in our group. Using that as the clue, one of our members found it fairly easy to fit most of the rural action and descriptions into the Southern Pentlands, with Kirsty’s farm plausibly  being Harperrig Farm, and Hermiston being Baddingsgill Farm. The old drove road joins the two, with a climb up in either direction to a mass of peat hags in the central section. Glencorse Kirk is at the other end of the Pentlands, some eight miles to the north east, and the house at Swanston where the young Stevenson spent his summers is a mile or two further on. And the lonely gravestone of the “Covenanter’s Grave” lies only a mile or two away from the drove road over the ridge of hills to the south.

A writer in our group was intrigued by Stevenson’s creative process, as he talks of his books as eggs that he leaves, lifting the lid occasionally,  until they eventually hatch. But did this writing process of long maturation contribute to leaving the novel unfinished? At the time of his death he was alternating between writing Hermiston one day and the less demanding St Ives the next. Perhaps he had the habit of starting something off with enthusiasm and then dropping it. The Tusitala edition of his works includes eight other unfinished stories alongside Hermiston.

Stevenson was forward thinking in having Archie an opponent of capital punishment, a plot element that would have come out even more strongly if the plot as originally conceived had been followed in  having Archie himself sentenced to death…

….time to lay down the pen and have a generous refill of El Cheapo….

….But they were off again… it started with an innocent question - why are the “Black Brothers” called “black?” ….Well, part of the whole romantic push from the example of Dumas, to  make them seem  more villainous, indeed parts of this remind me of “Treasure Island”.…not that they were people of colour?…no, but maybe swarthy, like the pubs called “The Black Boy” which are not racist but are celebrating the swarthy Charles 2nd….well the one in Bristol is plausibly linked to the slave trade…well, black-haired?… the golden hair of Kirstie senior is contrasted with black-haired Kirstie junior…Stevenson makes a big deal of that black hair/gold hair contrast as if it has some special significance for him…

……struth!!….give a poor scribe a break!…

…indeed the novel is full of binary contrasts: town versus country, father versus son,18th versus 19th century attitudes, aunt versus niece, Scots versus French…perhaps we should expect nothing less from the author of Jekyll and Hyde….and so they went on….why two Kirsties?….why set near the end of the Napoleonic Wars?…………….

Waking with a start, I heard that………it was now the second part of the evening. Members had been asked by the host to consider how they thought the novel might have ended. There is an official version - from Stevenson’s daugher-in-law and secretary, Mrs Strong - of how he planned the rest of the novel. And some felt that novel as planned would have worked very well. But it was perfectly possible that he would have changed his mind as the novel progressed. In trying to write a more serious style of novel, he might have felt his plot as sketched out would have seen a relapse into adventure and melodrama (and one of us felt that there were already signs in the fragment of the adventure style of writing pushing through). And characters can of course develop unexpectedly in the course of writing - as, noted Mrs Strong, Kirstie senior already had done.

So - in another world first!!! - there follow two original proposals from Book Group members for how the book might have been completed, plus a a synopsis of the ending in the recent BBC Radio 4 dramatisation, plus Mrs Strong’s version. Fanfare!…..

………FOUR ENDINGS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR….

ENDING A/. THE PROPOSER

“ Braxfield [on whom Lord Hermiston was modelled] was my heavy lead.” “Hermiston felt drawn to his son with a softness of sentiment he would not care to admit.” Of course RLS was like Archie, an only son of a somewhat austere father who certainly loved his son but may have had difficulty showing it. Lord Glenalmond also tells Archie that his father loves him. And the family doctor does. “Just try to be less of an idiot.” Sounds timeless from father to son. So I suggest that the Hanging Judge is supporting his son as the tale comes to its conclusion. Innes has to seduce or rape Kirstie junior. If she is seduced, I do not see Archie killing Innes, being imprisoned, and then reconciled to Kirstie. If she is raped does Archie got first to her, and then kill Innes? I do not see this either, but I certainly assume Innes is killed. 

The Elliot family are writ large and that invites the reader to put them in the frame. One could kill Innes. Stevenson in correspondence with friends has them possibly rescuing Archie from jail. In writing to JM Barrie he asks whether a tragedy and a comedy can start the same way and simply diverge with the last scene. He thought not. There is nothing but foreboding in the Introduction and is this not how it continues? We discussed Great Expectations a few years ago, and there Dickens intended a sad ending, a friend persuaded him to give way to sentiment, and he then admitted he should have followed his instincts. RLS is affected by the same conflict.

Then we have the two Kirsties. With a happy ending would they get on well together? No. Kirstie senior understood Archie as one who has seen him from birth and she is clearly a perceptive woman and very close to Archie. Also clearly, she loves him. Kirstie junior loves him too. But is this not the fancy of a young woman? She does not see the problems. Amor vincit omnia?  In the last scene, she thinks she is being dropped. Archie felt “a bewildered fear of the explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with.” Colvin wrote “there is a change in the characters under the writer’s hand.” And Stevenson, “I will not betray my  secret or my heroine.” One of the Kirsties is that person, but which? Of course junior might have, with family help, raised the mob. But for me, the elder is more likely.

Archie. “He was dangerous when his heart was stirred.” But how dangerous? He might have gone home from the last meeting with Kirstie jnr , dismissed Innes who would leave in a few days, but Archie would have to give him money first for transport to his parents. Then possibly Innes seduces Kirstie and thinks that is ok as Archie has parted from her He then offers Archie and Kirstie snr this as his revenge. The killing must follow, and so this was a moorland death. Innes went out for a last walk before leaving the following day, and either Archie or Kirstie snr follows him and kills him. Kirstie sees no future for herself but would sacrifice herself for Archie. Might she do it? Then might Archie be arrested for murder and tried. Kirstie then comes forward and confesses. 

So what is the central role for Lord Hermiston? Could be that Innes goes for his walk on the moor, Archie wants to go out after him but Kirstie beats him to it and stabs Innes. The young bloods of the Tuesday Club assume, when the body is found, that Archie did it. They take pleasure in reporting what they know to the authorities. Archie is arrested and the news is passed on to Lord Hermiston who goes straight to the jail. Archie confesses he did it, but his father examines him and realises he is protecting someone. He also finds out about Kirstie Jnr. He turns every precept of his upside down to get Archie released. They both go to the farmhouse and find Kirstie snr has killed herself. 

Archie cannot cope with his sacrifice and he might then commit suicide, but his father as the “heavy lead,” devotes his time to saving his son with love and understanding. And Kirstie junior? The romance is over and her brothers would not take Archie into the Elliot family, so no happy ending.

B/. ANOTHER BOOK GROUP MEMBER

Frank makes advances but is rejected by the pure Christina. Feeling humiliated he seeks revenge by starting a rumour that she had succumbed! Dandie confronts Frank, and in a rage, Frank kills him and is arrested. Meanwhile Archie feels that he can’t live without Christina and decides to marry her no matter what his father says – after all he has defied him before. Surprisingly his father agrees to the match – “all the young lassies in Edinburgh are flighty and shallow and I, after all, married above myself!”

He is the “hanging judge” for Frank, but after this case he decides “no more” and retires. Have Archie’s feelings about hanging got through to him? 

He retires to Hermiston and passes many happy days in the company of Christina, a companion that he never had.

Archie returns to the Bar where he is a very successful defender of the “downtrodden” and becomes a just judge himself, held in the very highest respect by society.

I haven’t decided on how many children the happy couple have and Kirsty(elder) adores the happy family atmosphere!!

C/. THE BBC RADIO 4 DRAMATISATION (with thanks to our member in Sweden)

At 28 minutes in to the second hour-long dramatisation, we reach the point where the book is cut short. The BBC producers, however, plough on seamlessly and present in the remaining half an hour how they believe the tale would or should have ended. 

After the argument, Archie travels to Edinburgh to seek his father's approval to propose to Kirstie, but that is robustly refused and the relationship between Archie and his father is effectively ended. While Archie is away in the city, Frank Innes forces himself violently upon Kirstie, sexually assaulting her before fleeing Hermiston to take the coach to Carlisle. 

When Archie returns to Hermiston, the older Kirstie Elliot is waiting outside with the terrible news (in a scene reminiscent of the scene at the start of the book when Lord Hermiston is met by Kirstie Elliot with the news that his wife is dead). Archie collects his pistols and gallops off on his horse to intercept the coach. He stops the coach and challenges Frank Innes to a pistol dual at 10 paces. Frank cheats and fires his pistol early, misses Archie and then is shot dead by his adversary.

Archie is arrested and put in jail in Kelso. When his father comes to ask him before the trial why he shot Innes, Archie stays silent, only telling his father that he (Archie) has finally found the capacity to judge, having been judged by his father all his life. In order to protect Kirstie's honour, Archie refuses to report the crime that Innes had committed. Lord Hermiston subsequently sits in the public gallery during the trial of his son and cries out to Archie to "say something!", but Archie refuses and instead pleads guilty. He is sentenced to death.

When young Kirstie comes to visit him before his execution, Archies proposes to her in his cell and asks her to "celebrate this day forever" and remember him at the Weavers' Cairn. Kirstie is distraught and returns home to report the whole sorry story to Dand. That night Dand successfully leads a party to break Archie free from the jail in Kelso. The lovers immediately escape together to Glasgow, from where they set sail.

The dramatisation ends by informing the listener that Lord Hermiston never lived down the shame and that he died a broken man as a result. Finally, a letter arrives to Kirstie Elliot at Hermiston informing her that Archie and Kirstie are safe and making a new life for themselves in Boston, and that Kirstie has just given birth to a baby daughter.

D/. MRS STRONG’S VERSION

Sidney Colvin, in his editorial note, writes: “The intended argument, so far as it was known at the time of the writer’s death to his step-daughter and devoted amanuensis, Mrs Strong, was nearly as follows:

“Archie persists in  his good resolution of avoiding further conduct compromising to young Kirstie’s good name. Taking advantage of the situation thus created, and of the girl’s unhappiness and wounded vanity, Frank Innes pursues his purpose of seduction; and Kirstie, though still caring for Archie in her heart, allows herself to become Archie’s victim. Old Kirstie is the first to perceive something amiss with her, and believing Archie to be the culprit, accuses him, thus making him aware for the first time that mischief had happened.

“He does not at once deny the charge, but seeks out and questions young Kirstie, who confesses the truth to him; and he, still loving her, promises to protect and defend her in her trouble. He then has an interview with Frank Innes on the moor, which ends in a quarrel and in Archie killing Frank beside the Weaver’s Stone. Meanwhile, the Four Black Brothers, having become aware of their sister’s betrayal, are bent on vengeance against Archie as her supposed seducer. They are about to close in upon him with this purpose, when he is arrested by the officers of the law for the  murder of Frank. He is tried before his own father, the Lord Justice-Clerk, found guilty, and condemned to death.

“Meanwhile the elder Kirstie, having discovered from the girl how matters really stand, informs her nephews of the truth: and they, in a great revulsion of feeling in Archie’s favour, determine on an action after the ancient manner of their house. They  gather a following, and after a great fight break the prison where Archie lies confined, and rescue him. He and young Kirstie thereafter escape to America.

“But the ordeal of taking part in the trial of his own son has been too much for the Lord Justice-Clerk, who dies of shock. “I do not know” adds the amanuensis, “what becomes of old Kirstie, but that character grew and strengthened so in the writing that I am sure he had some dramatic destiny for her.”

Phew! As I finally laid down my pen, some clever clogs informed us that Stevenson’s death had been precipitated by the strain of pulling a cork from a wine bottle……….

….guiltily I looked again at the easy-pouring wine box……then refilled my glass and drank a toast to RLS.

21/12/20 “ENTER THE AARDVARK” by JESSICA ANTHONY

Get stuffed!

“You, you faggot, are an aardvark, an irrational, everlasting Earth-product, and whether you are ready to accept this or not, you have been, all this time, it must be said, wearing the skins of your enemy.”

In December 2020, at the end of a difficult year, the Monthly Book Group convened digitally for an extra meeting to discuss “Enter the Aardvark”, the third novel by Jessica Anthony, an American author who has been attracting considerable attention of late. Her third novel deals with taxidermy, “the Herero, the Namibians sporting the skin of their oppressor”, and links the twenty-first century affairs of a Ronald Reagan obsessed Republican congressman, Alexander Paine Wilson and his partner Greg Tampico to an earlier relationship between a Royal Leamington Spa taxidermist, Titus Downing, and his affairs with a 19th century African explorer, Sir Richard Ostlet.  The explicit link is an Aardvark, caught and prepared for display in 1875, and delivered to Wilson by a Fed Ex employee, starting a train of events that lead to Wilson’s downfall in a tragi-comic black farce, teasing the reader by playing with the notion of déjà vu.

The proposer said he had laughed out loud while reading the book and chose it as he thought the political satire would bring much needed light relief to the un-assembled club. He spoke briefly of Anthony’s background as a young, east coast liberal, and how she wrote the first draft of the book in six weeks while guarding the Maria Valeria Bridge between Štúrovo, Slovakia and Esztergom, Hungary. Apparently, she started with the title, then developed the story from there. Our proposer introduced us to a new (to most of us) plot device, a “McGuffin” – an object or device in a film or book that serves no purpose other than to trigger the plot, for example used by Hitchcock in the 1930s.

He was intrigued by mirroring of the two plots, although preferring Georgetown to Leamington Spa. Some aspects of the plot were ambiguous, was Richard alive or a ghost, following the loss of his eyes and their insertion in the aardvark?  He felt the writing style was typical of contemporary US writers and made mention of the use of the second person, which divided opinion among the group, although all would agree it was not a “showstopper”. He was moved to look at the nature and science of aardvarks, proposing the metaphor of the illogical creature that defies evolution. Where do we take that, the emphasis on homosexuality, the repressed senator that idolizes Ronald Reagan, the absurdity of contemporary US politics? He suggested that, although Donald Trump is not mentioned explicitly, (the book was written in 2017), he was probably the inspiration, and the author had been quite clever in settling on Ronald Reagan rather than Trump as the subject of Wilson’s obsession. The parody reference to the 1776 revolutionary spirit of Thomas Paine alludes to Trump’s America when congressman Wilson reveals his Paine-inspired manifesto to separate Democrats and Republicans, “It’s Time for Two Americas”.

What were our impressions of the book?

First and foremost, everyone, well almost everyone, found it very funny and praised the timing of the choice. There was favourable comment on the staccato format of short segments switching between the past and present and that the author had managed so well to switch mood between the Victorian and contemporary US modes of depiction. Some were less sure of the treatment of homosexuality, and by extension the stereotyping of politicians (or taxidermists?) as gay. Did the author have experience of gay relationships? One of us was surprised that the author was female, but perhaps we should be circumspect.

The theme of evolution was important. Our expert commented on the idea of causality, from formation of the earth to today, and how events in Victorian times affected the US 20th century. The prologue starts, “a swirling mass of vapors is unhinged, shooting through outer space”, continues with the emergence of the “virgin class Mammalia”, the discovery of the “Earth Pig”, so called by the African hunters, entered in the notebook of Ostlet’s assistant, stuffed by Downing, delivered on Wilson’s doorstep about one hundred and forty-two years later. One liked the zoological references, reminding him of first year at university. A colleague agreed, teased about evolution, colonialism, love and sex. He kept on reading rather than think deeply about the several themes that were introduced. Another suggested that perhaps the author had ‘swallowed Wikipedia’, too many themes were dumped on the page rather than integrated in the plot, but again, that was a minority view. The proposer agreed that too many elements in the story might make it indigestible, a possible flaw, but also suggested it was better to leave it on the surface and not to dive too deeply into it.

Another agreed it was clever, well-constructed, but found it a bit difficult in switching between the past and present, losing the thread. It highlighted the difference between the US (dollar fixation) and the UK (status fixation). There were other serious themes, the lack of empathy on the part of the US senator, how he despises woman, doesn’t care about climate change, and is contemptuous of homosexuals in his repressed state. Turning again to the McGuffin, did the constraint of the chosen title make the imagination deeper, attributing Andre Gide. He further suggested that aardvark symbolizes man’s inhumanity to the animal kingdom, and referred to the Jiva, the continuity of life through all types of sentient being, e.g. in the transference of the eyes from Richard Ostlet to the aardvark.

So, the meeting ended. As was usual in these video evenings, the discussion was shorter and more focused, for good or bad. Inspired by the opening quote, your scribe listened again to ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ by the Pogues.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

26/11/20 “NAPLES ’44: AN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER IN THE ITALIAN LABYRINTH” by NORMAN LEWIS

Our host introduced the book very briefly, skipping the customary preamble on the author’s biographical details. He explained that this book had grabbed his interest through the writings of Max Hastings the British journalist and military historian. The Anglo-American liberation of southern Italy is a part of WW2 that few of us had read about, neglected by popular history-writers, almost ignored by newspapers of the time, yet very costly in lives.

The book is a war memoir written from diaries 30 years after the event by Norman Lewis, an intelligence officer in the newly-formed branch of the British Army known as the Field Security Service. He and 11 others were sent to Naples in late 1943 following the fall of Mussolini and the Armistice between Britain and Italy. The book is harrowing, with searing images of poverty, despair, chaos, corruption and famine. Yet the prose is beautiful – the book is Lewis’s masterpiece.  The memoir was written from his diary; not verbatim but developed and perhaps embroidered from his reflections.

Was the recruitment of intelligence officers really so lax? Only blue-eyed men from red-brick universities with a foreign language were chosen in a dubious interview process. Were the duties really so vague? No definition was given of the mission, and there was an almost complete absence of orders from London headquarters. Little linkage or sharing of information with the American allies is evident. It was a shambles; how did the British ever win the war?

The author travelled with the US 5th Army to Salerno as part of the invasion convoy in the Dutchess of Bedford, arriving on September 1st 1943. The briefing lecture by an intelligence officer revealed little; Lewis says the lecture could have been summed up in a single sentence ‘we know nothing’. Then a few days later, they landed at Paestum on a beautiful beach which he describes as one of the ‘fabled shores of antiquity’. All seemed tranquil, yet what the author would experience in the coming weeks and months in Naples would be hellish.

The book is a first-hand and detailed account of the war-torn city and the desperate state of its people. The male population resorted to theft and black-market trading whilst for the women, prostitution was the principal source of income. The soldiers from USA and Canada behaved very badly indeed. Is it always thus in war? Lewis describes the state of affairs in a matter-of-fact way with great precision. Some of his accounts are horrific, some very touching – demonstrating that human compassion occasionally exists even when circumstances are dire.  The southern Italian character comes across strongly – the importance of family, the region, religion, the sense of pride too. But there are no heroes.

We all liked the book, even those who confessed to avoiding books about war. We have read several war books and we made comparison between this and Nella Last’s War – a very different book but like this one, a haunting account based on diaries. We also read Geoffrey Wellum’s  First Light – the diary of a WW2 RAF fighter pilot. As in this book, we noted the shambolic recruitment process, and again we wondered how the British had managed to win the war. It is strange that some of our generation, raised in peacetime, are so obsessed with war; perhaps because war is so often glorified. There is no glorification in Lewis’s book, yet if one looks for old newsreel accounts of the war in Naples the story was quite different – see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IytTr99paJ8

In this Pathé movie we British and our North American friends are the heroes who rescue and liberate the grateful Italian populace.

There are moments of beauty: the coming of spring and the appearance in the street of the broad bean seller; the view of Naples from afar; the description of a trip to Capri with Frazer (from Peebles) and the two girls in fox-fur; the account of an eruption of Vesuvius on March 19th – evoking Pliny’s description of the AD 79 event. However, these moments are rare. Nor is there much humour; irony, yes. One has the impression that Lewis is a ‘good chap’ able to empathise with the ordinary people yet not capable of doing much about their plight.

Was his personal war effort of any use? Not that we could discern, except that he did intervene in an attempt to send twenty venereal-diseased prostitutes to the north for the purpose of infecting German soldiers. His routine contributions were well-intentioned – for example – trying to bring black-marketeers  to justice and doing his best to stop soldiers marrying local girls. He seems to have behaved well towards the locals, making friends, but towards the end he began to lose their trust by refusing gifts which he thought were disguised bribes. Was the entire southern Italy campaign any use in the War effort? The Americans never wanted it in the first place; it was Churchill’s project to attack ‘the soft underbelly’ of Europe. What Max Hastings wrote in the April 2008 New York Review was:

“Worst of all, it became perceived as a place of failure, where each small territorial gain was achieved at such cost that talk of victory became choked in ashes. Salerno, the Rapido, Anzio, Cassino were names inscribed in blood and grief in the annals of the American and British armies. When the breakthrough to Rome belatedly came in June 1944, it was promptly eclipsed in the world’s attention by D-day in Normandy”.

Some of us told our own stories about Naples. One member had a connection through the Italian-Scot family of Crolla, famed in Scotland for bringing Italian wine and food to our northern shores. I hope to read something about this in “Dear Alfonso” by Mary Contini, a Director of the famous delicatessen and wine merchant, Valvona & Crolla.

Although we all enjoyed the book, there were some quibbles. One of our members challenged our assumption that diary-based accounts were to be relied upon to tell the truth. ‘Look at autobiographies’ he said in support of his position, and we agreed that he had a point. Two other members noted a degree of disjunction in the book– which at one level is a sporadic narrative, jumping in a series of short chapters from one scene to another. Others joined in, saying they preferred novels because only in the novel can the proper development of character emerge. ‘You learn more from a novel than a diary’ someone said. And, ‘if this were a novel you might not believe that events could turn out so dire as this’.

As often occurs, the conversation turned to football. The excuse this time was that Diego Maradona had died the day before our meeting, and there had been great mourning in Naples (he scored 81 goals in 188 games for Napoli according to Wikipedia). There ensued a conversation about who was the greatest footballer in modern times. I had previously discovered that Messi and Pele have a far better average and now it falls to me to make a spreadsheet of goal averages and trophies gained (Maradona, Pele, Messi, Best..and Alan Shearer is in the running too).

We have become accustomed to meeting via Zoom. Attendance is higher, although the conversation doesn’t flow quite so freely. Nor does the wine; it’s a different experience by Zoom and the meeting ends sooner – perhaps after less than two hours.

29/10/20 “KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL” by ANTHONY BOURDAIN

 Our virtual host for the evening explained that he had discovered a copy of “Kitchen Confidential” in his house. It had been left by one of his sons, who is a chef, following a visit. His original choice of book had been “ Scottish Journey” by Edwin Muir but it had proved difficult to source and this required him to find an alternative. He found “ Kitchen Confidential” to be an entertaining read and was interested to hear what others thought of it.

A surprising choice. Very “alternative ”. Few of our virtual group had heard of Anthony Bourdain and those that had mainly recollected seeing him on television presenting programs on, travel, international culture and cuisine. No one had read this book or indeed any of his writings. Our host proceeded to enlighten us with a brief overview of Bourdain’s life and an insight into the creation of the book.

Born on 25th June 1956 in New York, Bourdain’s mother was an editor at the New York Times and his father an executive at Columbia Records. His father’s parents were French and it was through holidaying in France that young Anthony discovered his love of food.

He was a rebellious child. His challenging nature got him into trouble at school. He started to experiment with drugs and eventually dropped out. His fascination with the food industry was re-enforced while working in various kitchens in Provincetown Cape Cod. Initially a dishwasher he worked his way up through the various cooking stations before obtaining a place in the prestigious Catering Institute of America He graduated in 1978.

There followed almost 20 years of experiencing and exploring the practices of the cooking industry and developing his critique of these. In 1997 The New Yorker published his controversial article” Don’t Eat Before Reading This”. It was a brutally honest account of the inner workings of the restaurant world. This was the precursor to “ Kitchen Confidential” and heralded a step change in his fortunes with the launching of his popular TV series “ A Cook’s Tour” and “ No Reservations”.

He married twice, divorced once and separated from his second wife with whom he had a child, Ariane, in 2007. Tragically Bourdain, aged 61, was found dead in his hotel room in Kaysersberg, France on June 8, 2018, after committing suicide.

The book was generally well received with many admiring his no-nonsense writing style. Always direct and to the point while at times aggressive. His prose was considered to be unpretentious and entertaining. His attention grabbing use of “Kitchenese” was referred to by one critic as:

 “A simmering stew of spicy adjectives and bitter expletives slung on to the page.”

His use of imagery and metaphors combined with a distinctive vocabulary brought to life the situations and circumstances he describes.

“Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

Those that enjoyed the book tended to do so on the basis of particular chapters or more general insights into the workings of the industry or the characters inhabiting it. This suggested an imbalance in the relative strengths of the different chapters or the themes being covered. It was suggested that this could be related to some confusion with the chronology of the main narrative. His frankness and apparent honesty were generally appreciated, all the more so when these attributes were layered with a total disregard for political correctness and the lack of filters of any kind.

“ I just didn’t give a shit at all what people might think. I didn’t think anyone was going to read it, so what did it matter. I just told the truth on every page.”

His use of short provocative chapter openings to entice the reader to read on were noted and thought to be effective. It was thought that Bourdain’s frank disclosures of his own weaknesses; particularly his early drug addiction gave him credibility in describing the horrors of the kitchen world. His reflective and self-deprecating manner was identified as important factors in the popularity of the book and his unique way of expressing this was admired by those who enjoyed the book.

“ I treated the world as an ash tray” and;

“ If you look someone in the eye and call them a worthless puddle of badger crap it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. It can be-and often is-a term of endearment.”

His exposure of kitchen culture, the personality of restaurant proprietors, the work ethic, the abuse of staff , the dishonesty and the unsanitary truth about the way the business works were all eye openers and had something of interest for most of the group However, it was his vivid evocative writing delivered in a helter skelter fashion that captivated most.

He was described by one of our group as the punk rock version of a chef. The Johnny Rotten of the culinary world. Outspoken and prepared to try anything once. He even ate and apparently enjoyed Haggis and deep fried mars bars when visiting Scotland during his Cook’s Tour series. It was suggested that the book should be of greater interest to those working in the industry; homage to their work ethic. However, it was pointed out that it had in fact been written to warn, inform, expose and alert all of us who dare to patronise restaurants.

Two members of our group did not enjoy the book. One thought it somewhat pretentious. Exaggerating for effect and boasting. Another was disappointed at the lack of characterisation. Even the advice given to avoid fish on a Monday or a brunch menu (often seen as an opportunity to get rid of leftovers) was dismissed as simply common sense. Advice on the best pots and pans, plates and kitchen knives to purchase was also scoffed at.

As often happens we digressed and spent time considering the work ethics of immigrant labour. This discussion was triggered by Bourdain’s many references to the hard working Mexican, Dominican, Salvadorian and Ecuadorian kitchen labour. It was suggested that their work attitude was based on the poverty they had experienced and their hunger for self-improvement.

It was thought that immigrant labour in the UK is also considered to be harder working and that this reflects attitudinal differences. Experience of many foreign students in Scottish Universities appears to support the contention that they are more motivated and harder working than locals.

As we drew the discussion to a close thoughts turned to the task of coming to terms with the advice. “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”. It was, after all, more than 20 years ago and based on New York restaurants. It was agreed that life without restaurant eating would be greatly diminished but perhaps safer.

Our host was thanked for proposing “ Kitchen Confidential “ and for leaving us more discerning and appreciative of restaurant food.

24/9/20 “A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR” by DANIEL DEFOE

The proposer outlined a few bare facts about Daniel Defoe and the book.  Defoe lived from circa 1660 to 1731, so he was about five years old at the time of the plague of 1665 in London.  Although the book reads as a first-hand account, it is considered to be founded on his uncle’s journals, his father’s memories, and his research into documents of the time.  It was published in 1722.

The proposer talked about why he had chosen the book.  He had studied and enjoyed ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘The Adventures of Moll Flanders’ in the past, and considered Defoe to hold an interesting place in the development of the literary form that we now call the ‘novel’.  He preceded by some decades other seminal figures such as Richardson, Goldsmith and Sterne.  The Journal cannot be easily categorised, sitting somewhere between documentary and fiction.  Indeed, one reader in the course of our discussion pointed out that it could be considered less as a forerunner of the novel than of our current genre of ‘drama-documentary’ on television.

The proposer enjoyed Defoe’s straightforward style and had found the book an engaging and fairly ‘easy’ read.  Not everyone agreed.

The main reason for his choice of the book was in its interesting relevance to the situation the world is currently (2020) facing – a global pandemic caused by a highly infectious and sometimes deadly virus.  He enumerated some of these parallels – more emerged in the course of the group’s discussion.

• The initial feeling (in Europe) that it was someone else’s problem, affecting a city in China (Wuhan).  Similarly, in 1665 Londoners heard of a plague affecting the Netherlands, but thought it would not reach them.

• The obsession with statistical information (defended as being of great importance by one of our scientific readers).  In Defoe’s narrator’s case it is the repetitive citing of the ‘bills’ of deaths in various parts of London and its outlying districts.  In 2020 it is the nightly television news programmes’ tally of cases and deaths.

• The personal dilemmas that arise from the infection – the narrator’s dithering about whether or not to leave London for the country echoed, more trivially, by the proposer’s indecision about taking a holiday in France after the announcement of quarantine in the UK for those arriving from that country.

• The variations – and absences – of symptoms, making both the bubonic plague and the Covid 19 infection difficult to detect in many cases – sometimes with fatal consequences.

• The persistence of certain types of gatherings – notably of church-goers and religious groups of all kinds, persuaded that appeals to a god or gods would protect them.

• The prevalence of illogical beliefs and quack remedies – for example the suggestion that 5G communication masts were the cause of Covid19, or President Trump’s touting of household bleach and bright lights as palliatives.

There were more such similarities.

Some of the other points made by members of the group included:

• An appreciation of the insights into Restoration society offered by the book.

• A preference for the vivid and imaginative descriptions – for example of the night-time disposal of bodies – over the elements of repetition and somewhat haphazard structure of the book.

• A suggestion that Defoe’s intention with the book was at least in part to provide a ‘public health warning’, since the bubonic plague was still sometimes resurgent at the time of composition and publication.

• Disapproval of a seemingly ‘rushed out’ Amazon edition this year, with arbitrary illustrations and an introductory note about Defoe simply lifted word-for-word from Wikipedia!

• In spite of the seeming lack of structure, one reader felt that overall it was well-crafted to have the ‘feel’ of a journal, providing quite a raw reading experience.

• Another reader disagreed with ‘well-crafted’.  He found it unrelentingly bleak, and also wondered if Defoe was sensationalising the outbreak to make it more saleable.  He would have liked a clearer time-frame within the account.  The proposer later pointed out an exception to the bleakness – the book repeatedly draws attention to the charity and kindness shown by the better-off citizens to the poor, and praises the measures taken by the mayor and aldermen of the city – such as their scheme for guarding the houses of those infected, however mixed the results.

• The ‘novella’ within the book – the story of the three men who leave London to take their chances in the countryside – was particularly enjoyed by two readers.

• Our medical member found much of interest in the symptoms described and also in the reactions of people to the plague.  He pointed out that it was only in the late 19th century that the role of fleas in bubonic plague was discovered.

• Another reader agreed with the proposer that Defoe’s literary style compared favourably with more ‘florid’ works of the time.  He felt that Defoe wrote ‘functional, practical English’.  On the other hand, another member of the group remarked that he had found it ‘heavy going’.

• The narrator, while believable, was described as somewhat of an amalgam.  Sometimes it wasn’t clear to whom the narrative voice belonged.

• The frequency of references to God and religion in the book was pointed out, and one reader compared that to ‘Robinson Crusoe’, where the narrator has bouts of committing himself to God’s disposition.

• Another reader drew our attention to the difficulty of communication with the public in 1665.  Defoe, writing over fifty years later, comments that newspapers did not exist at that time.  In our present pandemic we have an avalanche of both information and misinformation to pick our way through.  On this subject it was remarked by an academic member of the group that he found that his students often relied on social media for information, and hence were not always in possession of verified facts that were well disseminated by the traditional media of news organisations such as television, radio and newspapers.  On the topic of openness of information, another member of the group related his experience of the flu epidemic of 1968, when the deadliness and extent of the virus was, in his view, hushed up in order to avoid public panic.

In conclusion, the discussion seemed to validate the view that, almost exactly three centuries after the publication of ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’, it still has much to say that is of enduring relevance.

27/8/20 “SHARK DRUNK” by MORTEN STRØKSNES

The title of our book this month was intriguing. It apparently refers to the meat of the Greenland Shark, which is toxic, and without proper preparation, consumption can lead to symptoms similar to drunkenness. One member of our group thought that it was because the main characters in the book were drunk with the prospect of catching a Greenland shark. Or was it because they were often quite drunk? The book undoubtedly had the longest subtitle of any of our previous books – “ The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean”. No difficulty, then, in guessing what our book was about! But there is much more filling the 290 pages than just the story of catching a shark. It is a goldmine of interesting facts; a tale with a peppering of asides that could have been drawn from Wikipedia.

Once again, because of COVID-19 regulations, our meeting was held on a video conferencing platform. The proposer of the book, ensconced in his cottage some 100 miles away in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, reminded us of the “normal times” before “lockdown” when he had gone on a cruise to Norway some 7 months earlier to see the Northern Lights and had sought some background reading on the Lofoten Islands. He had greatly enjoyed the book and as he had worked there in the past, he had some knowledge of the country. The author’s reminiscences about classical antiquity, tales of the sea, past gods, wildlife etc. had been enlightening to our reader. Whilst working in Norway, he had also owned a small boat, which wasn’t without its dangers. Some distance from land, the engine cut out and as his companion attempted to start the troublesome engine it dislodged from the transom. Instinctively, our host leapt to the stern, grabbing the engine before it sank to the bottom of the sea to a watery grave.

The author, Morten Strøksnes, was an award-winning writer and journalist from the remote community of Kirknes on the northern tip of Norway where most of the population stays in small isolated communities on the steep coastline. In 2018 the book had been awarded the Edward Stanford Wanderlust Adventure Travel Book of the Year and has been translated into 24 languages. One of our group, joining us by video from Sweden had experienced difficulty in obtaining a hard copy of the book, only receiving it from the US after some weeks of ordering. He wasn’t sure whether it was available in Swedish in which he is fluent. He had recently spoken with a young Norwegian colleague who had been surprised it had been translated into English and even more surprised that a Scottish book group was reading it.

The majority of the book group had enjoyed the book. It was written in an easy journalistic style. The numerous factual asides on sharks, whales, squid, climate change, pollution, Norwegian lifestyle, myths, legends, cuisine, and much more, intrigued many of the group. More than one member was moved to go and check some of the references.  One had subsequently learnt a great deal about 16th century maps and sea creatures, which he enthusiastically passed on to his family. Some, however, found that there were too many asides and gratuitous facts, which were a distraction. One member had a love hate relationship with the book; enjoying the relationship between the two men, their patience but being irritated by the excessive facts.

For some the holistic nature of the book was enjoyable and refreshing, with its links to nature, spirituality and history. There were several Scottish references, such as the sacrifice of a Highland Bull for shark bait and Robert Louis Stevenson’s family of lighthouse builders who were responsible for all 97 lighthouses built along the Scottish coast in a 150 year period.

One member observed that the book was part science and part literary analysis, with plenty of marine biology but also several literary references such as Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, and mentions of Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and of course R.L. Stevenson. He also felt that the book had quite a Hemingwayesque feel.

One member enjoyed the author playing around with the contrast between sharks and whales. Many writers refer to one or the other species but the author considers both and their interaction, the sharks being the ruffians whilst the whales are the bourgeoisie.

There were mixed views on what seemed a rather pointless and fruitless exercise. An angling member, however, enjoyed the spiritual relationship with the sea, which was similar to that experienced by many anglers. This lead to a discussion about why men have this desire to do strange things like catching fish. It is time consuming, expensive and often unproductive. Is it a throw back to man the hunter? Why are we here led to thoughts of existentialism? A golfing member had always thought that golf was a pretty pointless activity but realised that to many people angling was equally pointless, in that having spent ages trying to catch a fish, one threw it back.

One member had visited Norway numerous times and enjoyed the references to some of the bizarre culinary delights the Norwegians prepare. He felt that the maps provided could have been more detailed and some photographs of the Lofoten Islands and communities would have enhanced the read. Some members had resorted to Google maps or Wikipedia to obtain more information.

Another member however disliked the book, as he preferred his books to be entertaining, have a good story and plot, and not be educational. He thought the book was too different to what we normally read and had too much information. He had recollections of his childhood when he would be wakened early by his father and hauled out of bed to go fishing, where barely a word was uttered for the rest of the day. This was reflected in the book where the main characters barely converse. There was comment that women feature little in the book with only brief mentions of Hugo’s wife and daughter.

There was criticism of their irresponsibility when setting out cod fishing in an unseaworthy iced-up and leaking “floating coffin”. They were lucky to survive when the boat became overloaded with cod and the weather deteriorated. Later the author goes diving with Hugo’s daughter but becoming separated from her, gets swept away in the current of the Moskstraumen, the “navel of the sea” and eventually wakens up exhausted on a rocky beach near an abandoned fishing village.

The relationship between the author and his friend Hugo was often strained and tense, and the long spells where not a lot happened reminded one member of “Waiting for Godot.” The process of catching the shark takes forever and in the end the shark isn’t even landed. Maybe, we thought, the book is more about the process of the journey rather than the result.

Despite this, there are episodes of humour which relieve the tension, such as Morten’s irritation to the radio being on. Hugo prefers to work with the radio turned full up. When Hugo leaves the room, Morten immediately turns the volume down which creates even more tension. Hugo also tells the story about a boat packed with people from around the world on a whale safari off the island of Andøya who were subjected to the sight of whalers harpooning a minke whale. They would, however, remember the scene for the rest of their lives.

The history of whaling when 200 million whales were killed between 1870s and 1970s almost leading to extinction of some species was horrifying. The description of the industrial process and the cruel and frenetic slaughtering was nauseating. Scandinavians may have a reputation for being ardent environmentalists but the Norwegian and Icelandic history of the destruction of marine life indicates otherwise. Iceland and Japan continue to kill whales, some ostensibly for research purposes. Norway objected to the global ban on whaling and has resumed full-blown commercial whaling, killing more than three times that of Iceland and Japan. There was comment that Norway’s environmental credentials weren’t that “squeaky-clean”. In addition to its whaling industry, the country’s wealth is based on the less than sustainable North Sea oil.

This led on to discussion about humans doing irreparable damage to nature and the world. Our Swedish member who works for the European Environmental Agency strongly believes that we need to get the message across.

Most thought that the ending was a bit of an anti-climax and were incensed and distressed that the shark may have experienced a lingering and unpleasant death thanks to their exploits. One person thought it was the worst ending of a book he’d ever experienced. We had hoped that the author would have offered a moral to the story. However, another member felt on reflection that the image of the shark escaping with a large hook in its mouth and a long length of heavy chain hanging from it would linger long in the memory, and could be seen as a disturbing symbol of the damage that man casually does to the natural world.

The proposer had read the book twice and had gained much from the second reading, not being distracted by whether the elusive shark would be caught.  Profiting from giving books a second reading has been a common experience from some of our members. Perhaps there’s a moral here.

Towards the end of our discussion, one member returned to the title of the book. We had recently read “On the Black Hill”, which was described as a story about identical twin farmers in rural Wales. The title and description didn’t exactly make the book jump off the shelf but we were surprised how much we had enjoyed the book. “Shark Drunk” was a far more intriguing title with a rather bizarre subject and was felt to be a great selling point. What’s in a name?