26/11/2015: TRAIN DREAMS by DENIS JOHNSON, plus poems by SPENDER and THOMAS

 

TRAIN DREAMS by DENIS JOHNSON

Plus two poems:

“What I expected” by STEPHEN SPENDER, and

“Do not go gently into that good night” by DYLAN THOMAS.

The Book Group meeting took place despite the unavoidable absence of the proposer of Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams”, coupled with poems by Stephen Spender and Dylan Thomas.

The absent proposer helpfully provided the meeting with his personal views on the book and the poems and the connection between them. These were read out at the start of the meeting and provided the stimulus for the ensuing discussion. His comments and observations are unashamedly plagiarized in this blog.

Poet, playwright and author, Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany in 1949, and raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington, D.C., the son of a US State Department employee. A chronicler of substance abusers living at the margins of society, Johnson himself had a substance abuse problem from an early age graduating from alcohol to hard drugs, including heroin before eventually overcoming his addiction.

He gained a Masters degree from the University of Iowa in 1974 and has received numerous literary awards including: Whiting Awards, 1986, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts 1986, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1993 and the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007 for “Tree of Smoke”.

 He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012 for “Train Dreams” (while it was first published in 2002 as a long short story in “The Paris Review” it became eligible for a Pulitzer for the first time when it was published, as a novel, in 2012).

Controversially the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that it would award no Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012.

Johnson is currently the first visiting professor in Boise State University, Idaho, where he is contributing to the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing programme.

“Train Dreams” is a third person historical novella describing the life of Robert Grainier, an orphan shipped by train in 1893 into the woods of the Idaho panhandle. He grows up, becomes an itinerant labourer working on logging gangs, and falls in love. He loses his wife and daughter in a particularly devastating wildfire. The story is about an ordinary man in extraordinary times, struggling to come to terms with the loss of his family, and bearing witness to the radical changes that transform his country in his lifetime.

The proposer was given the book as a birthday present and was so captivated by it that he has read it 3 times in the last 12 months. He chose it as a book group read because it is short! He hoped that this would give the group more time to think about the contents at a deeper level than has been possible with longer reads. When reading the book he found himself questioning the “purposeful” activities we all indulge in, separating what matters from what does not.

He was drawn back by the excellent lyrical quality of the writing, and the thread of understated humour. He commented that Johnson makes an extraordinary novella from an ordinary life and he suggests that this may arise from his background as a poet, perhaps even from the years of drugs and alcohol abuse.

He considered that the novel “has a real sense of place: I imagine easily I am there and I believe in the characters”. He referred to the following passage as an example of the lyrical prose to be found throughout the novella and which he thought so descriptively effective:

“Animals had returned to what was left of the forest. As Grainier drove along in the wagon behind a wide, slow sand colored mare, clusters of orange butterflies exploded off the blackish purple piles of bear sign and winked and fluttered magically like leaves without trees. More bears than people travelled the muddy road, leaving tracks straight up and down the middle of it; later in the summer they would forage in the low patches of huckleberry he already saw coming back on the blackened hillsides”

He also appreciated the humour which surfaces unexpectedly, and provides such a contrast with Grainier’s bleak and often humdrum existence, e.g. through the matter of fact exchanges of Grainier with a man shot by his dog.

“Sir, are you dead?

Who? Me? Nope. Alive.

Well I was wondering – do you feel as if you might go on?

You mean as if I might die?

Yessir.

Nope. Ain’t going to die tonight.

That’s good.

Even better for me, I’d say.”

He suggested that the contrasts drawn between the pace of the great global changes of the twentieth century and the local events that impinge on Grainier’s dull existence add pathos to his story. They reveal the passing of an age and expose the apparent mundaneness of his existence.

He described Grainger as a man who has no apparent expectation but is a man to whom things happen, and as a man who does not think deeply and creatively. He was a man of whom it might have been said, but nothing was ever said of him, that he had little to interest him.

Johnson’s summary of Grainier’s life is:

“ Grainier himself lived more than 80 years…. he’d never seen the ocean… he’d had one lover… owned one acre of property…. he’d never spoken into a telephone… he’d ridden on trains regularly, many times in automobiles and once on an aircraft… he had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him… When he passed away… he lay dead in his cabin through the rest of the fall, and through the winter, and was never missed”

The use of superstition and the extraordinary add depth to the characterization of Grainier.  Examples are when he feels he has been cursed by a Chinese man who escapes from imminent lynching, when describing his search for his family, his decision to remain and resettle the land after the fire, his sole encounter with his wife’s spirit, and his later encounter with the wolf girl who he believes to be his daughter, Kate.

“Kate is it you. But it was… Kate she was, but Kate no longer”

The book group admired both the book and the proposer’s views of it. All were captivated by Johnson’s writing and hugely impressed by his ability to pack so much into so few pages. They felt that his startling descriptive power had given meaning to Grainier’s very ordinary life.

Conversation initially focused on scene setting. We noted the importance of the development of the railways in America in the 1920’s and the use of labour drawn from, both other parts of the USA and abroad, including large numbers of Chinese.

The work was hard and dangerous. Life was cheap and could be cruel. It was a hand to mouth existence. Death was an ever present, an accepted fact of life observed by Johnson in a shockingly matter of fact way. There was an acceptance of hardship and a “keep the head down” attitude seemed to be the norm.

The group marvelled at the quickening pace of change over Grainier’s life, cleverly revealed by Johnson’s references to events and to Grainier’s wonder at some of his experiences.

The discussion then strayed into a debate about change and whether or not the pace of change today is any less than over the period covered by ‘Train Dreams”.

There were differing views on this. Some thought that change accelerates over time while others argued that the pace of change is less important than its impact on individuals and civilization as a whole. It was pointed out that Grainier had lived through a period of massive change, but that his changing world had had very little practical impact on him or his way of life.

The Group was also greatly impressed by the sense of isolation achieved by Johnson and discussed the various ways that he had achieved this.

In addition to the sense of place mentioned by the proposer, we thought that Johnson’s depiction of Grainier as a self-sufficient individual was a particularly important factor in building a picture of overall isolation. Grainier, with the possible exceptions of his wife, daughter and dogs, had no other meaningful relationships in his life The fact that these characters and the relationships between them, are only superficially described, has the effect of adding to that sense of isolation and loneliness.

This depiction of Grainier as a very private and lonely person is successfully cultivated through a number of references, eg: the conversation between a widow and Grainier:

“God needs the hermit in the woods as much as he needs the man in the pulpit. Did you ever think about that?” Grainier replies:

“I don’t believe I am a hermit” but he reflects “I a hermit? Is this what a hermit is?”.

His loneliness is also reinforced by the description of his struggles to deal with “pulchritude” and with his associated self-loathing.

“His desires must be completely out of nature; he was the kind of man who might couple with a beast, --- as he’d long ago heard it phrased---jigger himself a cow.”

The group particularly admired the evocative language used by Johnson, and the remarkable power and economy of words.

His ability to convey the essence of minor characters in a few short sentences was admired by many of the group. For example, the Chinese worker, who was about to be thrown off a railroad bridge by Grainier and a group of his fellow workers, is described as “twisting like a weasel in a sack” and “weeping his gibberish”.

Finally the group considered the point made by the proposer about the purposeful activities in which we indulge, and we debated whether we engage in activities that are of any greater significance than those that occupied Grainier’s life.

The ensuing discussion was destined to reach no meaningful conclusion, but nevertheless provided interesting insights into our differing views of our respective contributions to the world or to the society in which we live.

One reviewer of “Train Dreams”, said;

“Johnson remains defined as a cult figure writer because of his early drug drenched fiction and hard boiled prose, but in Train Dreams he stakes his claim as one of the key voices in contemporary American fiction.”

He goes on to describe the work  “A small masterpiece.”

While very few members of the Book Group had read much of Johnson’s work, or indeed sufficient contemporary American fiction, to be able to endorse the reviewer’s views about Johnson’s status, the Group was able to agree to describe Train Dreams as “A small masterpiece”.

In addition to “Train Dreams” the Group considered two poems with related themes: “What I Expected”, by Stephen Spender and “Do not go gently into that good night” by Dylan Thomas.

The proposer described “ What I expected” as a poem about disillusionment with life and questions whether we should, like Grainier, simply accept “the futility and banality of it all”.

Spender suggests that one starts life with grand intentions and a hope to become strong with continual effort, but ultimately he “watches cripples pass with limbs shaped like questions”. In contrast Grainier has no ambition, no expectation and simply accepts whatever life throws at him. “Arthritis and rheumatism made simple daily chores nearly impossible”.

Spender’s disillusionment arises from expectation, “expecting always”. Grainier on the other hand is not disappointed; he has no ambition, is contented and lives in the moment.

Dylan Thomas’s famous “villanelle” in which he urges his dying father to cling to life; to resist the inevitable, despite the loss of sight, general health and strength. To fight to the end. To “burn and rave” against dying.

Granier passed away quietly, in his sleep, without fanfare:

“He lay dead in his cabin through the rest of the fall and through the winter and was never missed.”

Perhaps he did “burn and rave”, but it seems highly unlikely and there was no one there to witness it. Grainier was at peace with the world and with himself, and no doubt died content and unconcerned.

It was suggested by some of the Group that Grainier’s way was best, but others thought that the world would be a much sorrier place if individuals simply accepted their fate without question or challenge. Indeed some went as far as to propose that the human condition required individuals to adopt a more aggressive approach to life.

In his concluding paragraph the proposer cynically stated:

“These three works all put the human condition into perspective, and should cause you to pause as you go about your all-consuming and reality-denying business”.

All considered “Train Dreams”, together with the two poems, to be an inspired choice and thoroughly “purposeful” reads.

They did indeed cause us to reflect on the meaning of life, and to question the worth of what we do.

An enjoyable read, with potentially depressing consequences.

.

29/10/2015 “ASYLUM” by Patrick McGrath.

The Book Group met in the Morningside home of one of its members.

Apart from being best known as a desirable residential suburb of Edinburgh, Morningside is also home to the original Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum, established in the grounds of the estate known as “Craighouse”. Originally developed as a private clinic it opened its doors to pauper patients in 1842. It was renamed the “Royal Edinburgh Hospital” in 1922.

As treatment for mental illness developed, institutional care became less prevalent. Patients were increasingly accommodated in villas purchased in the Morningside area as annexes by the Health Board for the purpose of integrating these patients back into the community.

In addition more modern facilities were developed at a different location in the heart of Morningside leading, in 1990, to the closure of “Craighouse”. The new hospital is currently being further developed to provide all acute psychiatric and mental health services for the Lothians.

It follows that the Morningside area’s long association with mental health treatment made it a particularly fitting location to consider and discuss McGrath’s “Asylum”. Indeed it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between the patient and the resident in the village that is Morningside.

McGrath was brought up on the Broadmoor estate: the location of a high security psychiatric hospital in England, where his father was the medical superintendent. His early experiences of listening to discussions and debates over options for the treatment of inmates left an indelible impression on him and provided him with a rich source of material for future reference.

Born in 1950 he was the oldest of four children, His parents were devout Roman Catholics and he was educated at Jesuit Boarding schools, firstly in Windsor and then Stoneyhurst.

He did not enjoy school life. He considered it repressive and at the age of 16 he ran away to London. He was not scholastic doing “dismally’ at ‘A’ levels. He failed history, and gained an “F” for French and an “A” for English.

Leaving school he attended Birmingham College of Commerce, which he described as “the last hope for dead enders like me”. On graduating his father found him a job as an Orderly at Ontario State Mental Hospital. That was in 1971 and he has lived mainly in the USA since then, only returning to the UK periodically to escape the worst of the New York summer.

He married the actor Maria Aitken in 1991 and he credits her with establishing New York as their home.

McGrath is described as a “gothic novelist”. While he dislikes this label he reluctantly admits to having a “gothic” imagination. It is about the past and focuses on “interiors”-the interior of the soul. He has written eight novels, three of which - “The Grotesque”,“Asylum” and “Spider”- have been made into films.

“Asylum” was first published in 1996 and the film, directed by David Mackenzie, was released in 2005 to very mixed reviews. The story is of a doomed love triangle where Stella, the wife of the Asylum’s Superintendent, falls in love with one of the inmates and runs away with him. It is narrated by a psychiatrist as an example of a catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession.

In the absence of a blogger each of the book group members present agreed to provide a short note of their views on the book and these are faithfully reproduced below.

“One of our number indicated that at one time he had been a Home Office official with close working links with Broadmoor Special Hospital. He had known the author’s father, also Patrick McGrath, the then Superintendent, and recognized the author’s Asylum as an accurate description of Broadmoor. It was not just the topography of Broadmoor that the author had picked up as a boy and young man living there. The novel provided a very good analysis of staff relationships and tensions as well as convincing accounts of certain types of mental disorder. Edgar Stark was a good example of acute personality disorder; his attitude to his lover of the moment was convincing. Similarly his account of Stella’s behaviour and descent into mental illness was equally convincing. Again the author had drawn upon his knowledge; relations between staff and patients are not unknown and the suicide of filicidal women is very common.

“The novel was excellent. It was a page turner that was gripping and shocking.”

“I enjoyed reading the book very much. The setting initially within a psychiatric hospital in the 1960’s was intriguing, having worked for 6 months within such an establishment in the 1970’s.

“Once the scene was set, the plot developed quickly and held my attention, leading me on eagerly to find out the next stage. The style narrated by a psychiatric friend of the main character, Stella, who was also a colleague of her husband, was cleverly written and one wondered how he knew so much. It later became pretty clear.

“The main characters apart from Stella’s son were well developed. I felt that I didn’t know too much about this lad Charlie. I also wondered about Edgar’s friend Nick, who was rather a mysterious character and we never got to know his surname.

“I enjoyed reading about the management of psychopaths, sexual obsession and later Stella’s depression and disassociation disorder. Stella’s sexual infatuation was realistic and quite titillating. The story line towards the end was a little predictable and the narrator gave frequent clues about the outcome.

“It was a good read despite the somewhat morbid content.”

“ Asylum was an interesting insight into a strange world!

“On a first read it was fairly absorbing and seemed to be based on a sound knowledge of the “system” although the characters were rather stereotyped. I found the downward spiral of Stella’s life fairly shocking – her end being all too predictable.”

“The second read was disappointing as the book had lost its drive once you knew the story.”

“There are very few novels dealing with life in a mental institution. The other one we could think of was Ken Kesey’s “One Flew a Cuckoos Nest”, later adapted for the cinema by Milos Forman. Of course there are others: for example “The Bell Jar”, a semi autobiographical account by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath, wife of Ted Hughes.

“Anyone who has visited a mental hospital may understand why these places and the people who live inside them have provided little inspiration for the writer. Psychosis is associated with irrational violence and chaotic behaviour, patterns of communication and human relationships which defy analysis. Uncontrolled and fanciful impulses or numbing depressions are hard to write about; yet most of us, at some time in our lives, will have them and quite a few of us will require treatment. Perhaps we would rather not be reminded of that fact.

“However, mental illness is one of the last taboo subjects, seldom spoken about, best left to the professionals, best kept behind closed doors. The novel opens the doors and forces us to think about two kinds of mental illness, and how they are dealt with (or not). It also demonstrates the fine lines between sanity and madness, between love and hate and between tenderness and violence. We wonder how a mother can let her child drown (The Medea Complex). We are reminded of the limitations of both psychiatry and psychiatrists – much depends on human judgement and the database of evidence, on which judgement is based, is not large.

“Despite the challenging subject matter the author manages to weave humor into his writing and this added to my enjoyment of the book.”

“While I found the book to be an enjoyable read I was rarely surprised by the twists and turns of the plot or, indeed by the actions of the main characters. It all seemed entirely predictable. This may be a product of McGrath’s device of using an “unreliable narrator” to tell the tale or alternatively it may be a consequence of living in Morningside for almost 40 years!

“Like others I found that the novel did not benefit from a second reading. While I appreciate that McGrath is regarded as a “Gothic” novelist I saw very little “Gothic” in Asylum. This categorization owes much to his earlier works, particularly “Grotesque” published in 1989. Since then his writings appear to have an increasingly diluted Gothic content.”

“His fascination with mental illness and adulterous relationships, presumably products of his early family life in Broadmoor and his experiences as a young man dealing with his demons and exploring his options, have combined with a command of English and concise writing to deliver an easy read which is both enjoyable and thought provoking.”

In summary everyone considered the novel to be a good read. More so, those reading it for the first time. Those who had read it before thought it lost the element of surprise on second reading. While everyone considered Stella’s suicide to be entirely predictable, the death of the child was unexpected, and really shocking. McGrath’s descriptive powers of place were greatly appreciated and his character development impressive.

We look forward to reading his next book, which we understand will reflect his Americanization.

24/9/2015: “THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING” by MILAN KUNDERA

We began with the proposer’s revelation that he had first been led to the book by a friend who was a womanizer.  Perhaps the friend had found a kindred spirit in one of the book’s central characters, Tomas.  He revealed that Milan Kundera  has just had another book published (The Festival of Insignificance)– last year- at the age of 85.  This was considered admirable, although the book had not been well-received by critics apparently.

Our first commentator mentioned the disjointed nature of the narrative – for example the early revelation of the ultimate death of Tomas and Tereza in a car crash, which lent a poignancy to their relationship.  We followed up with some debate about the dreams in the book – and in particular whether or not the Petrin Hill incident was a dream, since unlike the other dreams it was not explicitly revealed to be such – only the nature of the events seemed unreal.

A general ignorance of Nietzche’s writings was acknowledged amongst the group, although this did not prevent us discussing the concept of multiple lives.

It was suggested  that the characters in the book were primarily pegs on which to hang philosophical ideas.  Kundera explicity rejects the notion that his characters are anything other than artefacts of his imagination.  The book perhaps falls into a grey area between novel and philosophy – occasionally Kundera takes us off at a tangent (for example his discussion of kitsch).  However, we were nonetheless engaged by the four main characters as believable human beings going through a variety of life events.  It was also pointed out that Tereza’s dog Karenin was dealt with seriously.  Among the more overtly profound exploration of themes such as betrayal and love there was also attention paid to the relationships between people and dogs.

One of our group had just watched the film adaptation of the book, which Kundera had disliked and disowned.  The film had more or less jettisoned the philosophical material, but still, in the viewer’s opinion, created an interesting portrait of the characters and their lives.

Someone described The Unbearable Lightness of Being as curate’s egg of a book (ie. ‘good in parts’)  They had found it quite difficult to read, and had not been as fully engaged by the characters as most of us.  Tereza was widely agreed to be the most appealing character, with her vulnerability and dependency on Tomas’s love.

Returning to the philosophical content of the book, one reader suggested that it was like a firework show, with lots of colourful and interesting ideas thrown up into the air.  Unlike a philosopher, a novelist has no obligation to follow his ideas through to a logical conclusion.  He can simply scintillate.

We turned to the historical context of the book and talked about Eastern Europe in general and the current Syrian refugee crisis of 2015.  After this digression, we wondered if the nature of the book itself encouraged digression (a clever excuse for going off the point).  A member of the group brought us back on track, saying that the section of the book that particularly engaged him was the part dealing with Russian surveillance and their attempts to destroy Czech national feeling.  The operations of the secret police were well described.  It was pointed out that at the time Kundera was writing, there was no certainty that the communist bloc would ever come to an end.  Another reader found some of the most dramatic material in the book in this context – for example the conversations around Tomas’s possible retraction of his Oedipus article.

We were all amused by the remarks on academic dissertations on obscure topics, their pages unvisited “even on All Souls’ Day”.

It was mentioned that feminists had frequently objected to Kundera’s work .  We wondered if Tomas was a kind of male wish-fulfilment figure.  It was pointed out that he seemed easy to please, being contented as a surgeon, a window-cleaner, and latterly a country-dweller.  Window-cleaning, with its frequent opportunities for philandering, seemed to be best of all for him.

From this point, our conversational route became more of a spaghetti junction.  We got onto the nature of happiness, and the influence of climate.  All other things being equal, it was suggested that living within the tropics was conducive to happiness.  We then got onto the early youth of the proposer, and then to his proposal that in his experience Eastern Europeans were more intellectual than the British – ‘more thinkers than doers’.  We had insufficient statistical information to debate this further, but it took us onto the results of a supposed survey (probably mythical) of the IQs of American presidents (high score for Barack Obama here) and then onto the nature of Ghanaian Christian beliefs.  Having visited the west coast of Africa, by way of the Czech Republic and the United States, it was but a small further step into the Edinburgh night, as all the beer bottles were now emptied.

27/8/2015 "HAMLET" by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

We began with a brief discussion of different productions of Hamlet that we had seen – acknowledging that we were talking about a text designed for performance rather than private reading.  However, it was noted that one literary critic remarked that Shakespeare was for reading, not watching.  Comparisons were drawn between various interpreters of the main role – David Tenant, Derek Jacobi. Lawrence Olivier, and we looked forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch if we could. The proposer said that it was the 1964 Russian film adaptation, directed by Grigori Kozintsev that had first captured his imagination, and that the play became one of his favourite books as an adolescent.  Coming back to the play carrying a few more years, he still finds it powerful and fascinating emotionally, but has some reservations about his earlier enthusiasm.  We speculated on whether the angst-ridden hero was a figure more likely to appeal to more angst-prone younger audiences and readers.

We had read the play in different editions, and moved on to discuss the academic ‘industry’ devoted to producing a ‘definitive’ text.  Quarto 2 is considered by Arden as the nearest to the version Shakespeare would have produced on stage, but it is likely that he kept tinkering with it.  Editors can pick and choose their favourite versions of the lines, or transpose them between Hamlet and Horatio for example.  A fullest version would take up to five hours to stage.  (The 242 minutes of Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film adaptation was mentioned in this context).  Sometimes we noted that actors had ‘gabbled’ in productions we’d seen in order to get so much of the text in.

We moved on to discuss the central character of the play.  Hamlet has become a complex symbol for all kinds of things over the centuries – for example a byword for dithering and hesitation.

The critic Terry Eagleton said jokingly that Shakespeare would appear to be familiar with the works of Freud and Marx.  (In, presumably, an even lighter vein, it was proposed that Hibs footballers were all Hamlets, unable to put the finishing touch to their manoeuvres.)

Hamlet, like life itself, is full of ambiguities, and we wondered about what Shakespeare might have suggested to his main player, Burbage, to either clarify or leave more open what some lines might be taken to mean.  One of our group mentioned Peter Hall’s 2009 book ‘Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players’ as being very illuminating about how Shakespeare might have wanted his work performed.  Another book was also praised as giving insight into the historical context of Shakespeare’s work and life: ‘1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare’ by James Shapiro.  (A year that included the writing of Hamlet).

We discussed the language of the characters  – for example the language used by Claudius seemed very forced and artificial.  It was suggested that this was because he was consciously ‘playing the role’ of king.  We noted that Hamlet has more words to speak than any other Shakespearian character.  In spite of this plethora of “Words, words, words” (as Hamlet himself says), it was remarked by one reader that frequently the characters fail to understand each other.  One of us indeed saw some of the characters as being on the autistic spectrum, especially Ophelia.  The critic L.C. Knights argued that Shakespeare’s plays are about themes, not real people – although he himself also falls into the approach of earlier critics like Bradley of analysing the characters.   We also felt that the plot seemed of much less interest to Shakespeare than the philosophical content, and the musings on life and death of Hamlet in particular.  Indeed, the plot’s culmination in the fight between Hamlet and Laertes showed a cavalier disregard for plausibility.  There were also some discrepancies in the treatment of the ghost – he is presented as ‘real’, but then why can Hamlet hear him and Gertrude cannot?  One could only assume that these were unimportant issues for Shakespeare.

Horatio and the Gravedigger were seen by some as the only likeable characters in the play.  Hamlet himself was defended as ‘likeable’ by one of our group, but dismissed as essentially ‘frustrating’ by another.  Another among us found him an unpleasant individual, a ditherer, and considered his treatment of Ophelia appalling.  He said he met people like Hamlet all the time.  We wondered uncomfortably who he had in mind.

One of our readers brought up the debt Shakespeare owed to his sources – an earlier version of the story was popular in the 1580s and 1590s, perhaps written by Thomas Kyd, although no printed version survives.  This itself derived from earlier Scandinavian sources.  Shakespeare’s version, however brilliant and original in many ways, does arrive circuitously at the conventional endpoint of the revenge tragedy genre, which it shares with the tragedies of ancient Greece – i.e. pretty much everyone has to end up dead.

We discussed how a key theme of the play is the conflict between a pagan concept of revenge and the Christian concept of forgiveness.  Hamlet wants his revenge on Claudius to go beyond the grave – he won’t kill him while he’s praying, because he wants to send him to Hell.

A question was raised as to whether or not Elizabethans would understand Shakespeare relatively easily, as we might understand, say, The Archers.  Groundlings would have enjoyed knockabout humour and sword fights more than the subtleties of the language presumably.  Many references that are now obscure however would have been much more accessible to contemporary audiences. On the other hand, it was suggested, much of the difficulty of Elizabethan language falls away when delivered by a skillful actor.  One reader commented on how Shakespeare’s language is so concise that any attempt at explication always entails the use of far more words than he used himself.  There is a beautiful precision about his use of words, and this is evidenced by the extent to which his phrases have passed into common use – or gone ‘viral’ in contemporary parlance!

We moved on to discuss how Hamlet, in common with Shakespeare’s other plays, is reinterpreted in different places at different times.  For example there was an Eastern European view of the play as highly political, all about the difficulty of acting effectively against a repressive regime.  The proposer drew attention to historicist approaches to Shakespeare’s plays, with Elizabeth being near end of her life, and the possibility of James coming to the throne – a ruler from another country.  Also mentioned were more recent feminist approaches to Shakespeare, in their turn influenced by Freudianism. 

Finally, one of our group mentioned a visit to Girvan Library, where he failed to find any work by Shakespeare.  We wondered if knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays was in danger of fading away, and if schools were moving more and more towards the study of exclusively modern literature.  The proposer was congratulated for his ‘bravery’ in bringing Hamlet into our midst.  We had enjoyed re-reading it and discussing it, although we felt that perhaps after four hundred and odd years most things that could be said about it had already been said!

30/7/2015 "REGENERATION" by Pat Barker

Oh we do like to be the seaside, at least a select few of us gathered by the beach at Portobello as perhaps “prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness” had led to the absence of many of our number. (Maybe they were just on holiday? Ed.) An absent member had sent his comments, and regretted having not read it sooner on the grounds that it might be too sentimental. His opinion was very positive. Meanwhile, the survivors prepared to go ‘over the top’ as WW1 beckoned, again.

The proposer introduced ‘Regeneration’ (1991) with a short biography of Pat Barker, significantly mentioning her Yorkshire, working class upbringing by her grandparents, how she used to stick her fingers in her grandfathers bayonet wound, and of her later liaison and marriage to David Barker, a zoologist and neurologist. From such experience was the ‘Regeneration’ trilogy formed. Some of us had read all three novels, some only the first book. Rather than introduce spoilers we concentrated on the first book, although it was suggested that the subsequent novels would re-order emphasis on the major and minor themes in the first book. (Indeed, this proved to be the case as your humble scribe subsequently read parts 2 and 3 which clarified many of the themes in part 1. However, this is not recorded.)

Rivers, Yealland, Sassoon, Owen and Graves are real – the patients are fictitious but based on real cases from a book written subsequently by Rivers. (One of us had circulated an interesting article about Rivers work in the period.) It appears that the novelist has made exemplary use of this and several other historical sources, e.g. in that Sassoon really did amend ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. However, she has invented the persona of Rivers, through his reactions to events, his coming round in part to Sassoon’s ideas and possible repressed homosexuality. He does say at some point “the war must be fought to a finish, for the sake of the succeeding generations”. Indeed the book is quite subtle in that there is no overt pro- or anti-war case.

In the context of the book, Rivers is quite at odds in his theories of breakdown and conflict of shell-shock arising from combat and prolonged exposure.  Some of the arguments that pass through his head sound convincing, while others seem suspect. Believing that “prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness” were more likely to cause men to break down than “the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors” that his patients themselves used to explain their condition, he muses that this must also explain the prevalence of “hysterical disorders” in women in peacetime. 

Billy Prior, on the other hand, is thought to be socially and sexually ambiguous, an officer yet an outsider because of his background.  We discussed whether his perception of the officer class was viable. He assumed a certain snobbery and smugness in their attitude. However, he still made firm relationships, with Rivers and with Owen for example.

The proposer then noted that Barker had said “there is a lot to be said for writing about history, because you can sometimes deal with contemporary dilemmas”.  Although it has been said that she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of WW1, the implication was that this was about universal rather than WW1-specific truths. Could we avoid a discussion of Serbian politics from 1900? (See ‘The Sleepwalkers’). Time would tell, but it is accurate to record that conversations would often diverge from the text, especially when branching outwards from Sassoon’s declaration that opens the book, “not protesting against the conduct of the war but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men at being sacrificed”. The majority of our group made the point that Sassoon was young and naive, and such a declaration was foolish and would have no effect on such ‘conduct’. A minority view suggested that perhaps naivety brings clarity – out of the mouths of babes and sucklings etc. Does age bring wisdom or atrophy? Is there degeneration rather than ‘regeneration of the grey cells’? Well, if Wiki is to be believed the average age of commanding officers fell from 50 to 28 as the war progressed, and men of over 35 were barred from commanding battalions. However, this blog is getting off the point, echoing the discussion! Pass the port, Nigel.

So this novel is not just about WW1, but also about the need and justification for war, the effects on the combatants, consideration of societal change, of the emancipation of women, the breaking down of class barriers, of changing attitudes to heterosexuality and homosexuality, and of the attitude of the state. The title emanates from the experiment done on River’s friend Head in earlier times, when he deliberately severed a nerve in Head’s hand with the purpose of charting its gradual regeneration. From this we can compare and contrast the treatments to the mental trauma given by Rivers and Yealland, and how Rivers has to even question his own humane approach. He is torn between guilt in treatment and the stated aim to rehabilitate and send the men back to the front, and possible beneficial results (extreme in Yealland’s case).

In the wider context we discussed the possible effect of WW1, of war in general, as a necessary regenerating force on society. Within the book, the changing role and attitudes of the girls working in the munitions factories presage the huge changes that come after the war. There were changes too in sexual behaviour; heterosexual behaviour became more liberal, some crude forms of abortion were attempted, as in the description of the use of the coat hanger, and homosexuality was further repressed because of the concern about its effects on troop comradely spirit and morale with so many men in close proximity. Sassoon talks of how his friend was treated for soliciting, and how he subsequently had to modify his own behaviour to appear to be more normal or ‘cured’.

Barker mixes blunt and gritty working class language with poetic idioms. Perhaps the War Poets too – or at least the anti-war poets whom schools have adopted as the canon, managed something similar in combining the imagery of horror with the language of poetry. Your scribe’s favourite WC quote? – “eeh, hope a man never tries to shove anything up her flue. Be cruelty to moths”

We were all rather underwhelmed by the description of River’s childhood, and especially the introduction of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. Given the traumatic effect of the war on the soldiers’ speech, including mutism and stammering, and indeed Rivers own propensity to stammer it was assumed that this was making the link between his early childhood, the experience, and the subsequent sympathetic approach to such speech problems, in marked contrast to the electrodes of Yealland. There are also issues of parenthood, in particular the way that Sassoon looks on Rivers as a father figure who is much missed when he leaves Craiglockhart, as well as the role of Dodgson as a possible surrogate father.  However, one suggested this was possibly a case of research uncovering a celebrity that had got in the way. We also discussed the changing attitude to psychiatric treatment, of how a cure could better be affected by admitting and talking through a problem, rather than never talking about it, forgetting it.

What of the other central device, of bringing out the horrors of war not by direct descriptions, as was so effective in Birdsong (Faulks) that we had read earlier in the year, but by indirect description through the subsequent trauma. Most, but not all, found the book equally harrowing. On the other hand, the description of Yealland’s electroshock provided quite a lot of harrow for at least one reader, who recalled Laurence Olivier’s treatment of Dustin Hoffman in ‘Marathon Man’. (Eh? What’s the connection? Ed.)

So why does Sassoon return to fight?  Why does Prior talk of the shame of not going back? There are selfless reasons, notably the need to be loyal to your friends and comrades and for an officer at least, to be able to use experience gained to look after his men. These were motivating factors for Sassoon, which were nevertheless consistent with his declaration, or so he felt. The nature of masculinity, to be a man my son, is a recurring theme in the book and not just in the attitude to homosexuality. This certainly has changed, but not entirely, in the succeeding century.

So is war a regenerating force on a damaged or somehow deficient society? What are the beneficial effects of WW1? Even with a quorum having 40% historians, this was a tricky one to answer. Did the decision to support Belgium and France justify the killing of so many soldiers and civilians? Would Europe be a very different place in 2015 if no action had been taken, at least in this form? Was the sacrifice of allied troops necessary or in vain? If necessary and not in vain for the UK combatants, what of the sacrifice of German troops? 

Other than military and political changes, WW1 certainly accelerated societal change, especially with respect to class, women’s rights and education, as well as modifying sexual mores, but was it necessary? Sassoon’s point was that the war was being prolonged beyond its original purpose. To what extent would the common man be aware of the greater political picture? Others suggested that the war changed psychiatry, art and literature. Of course, one should not forget the extraordinary meeting and interplay between Sassoon, Graves and Owen, exemplified by the existence of the manuscript for ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ which has Sassoon’s annotations and suggestions. Did the war, or art as expressed by the war poets, change political thinking? What did Dylan have to say on the subject[i]? One of us noted that the French insisted afterwards that at least one ministerial appointment should be a soldier or ex-soldier. 

On these and other questions, the author leaves you to make up your own mind. However, it was proposed that both politicians and the media can still influence and exploit human base instincts, particularly tribal instincts, even in these days of mass communication and the internet. Other groups can also do this, of course, and there are many contemporary examples.

On one thing we all agreed; this was an excellent book. We all enjoyed it immensely and for those who had not done so, the next two books were on the ‘to do’ list.

And so to bed … suffering from WW1 literary trauma and with a need to be regenerated. Dr. Who has regenerated 12 times without addressing such deep concerns. Exterminate, exterminate….. where have I heard that before?

[i] The First World War, boys,
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

28/5/15 "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Robert Dodds

We were fortunate to have Robert Dodds, the author of this book, in our midst. He described how he first wrote the story as a radio play and then as a stage play. In 2011 he began working on the novel.  The fifth draft got as far as an editorial meeting at the publisher Polygon, but was narrowly turned down.  It took a further year and a sixth draft before the author arrived at the version that was finally self-published in 2014. We pondered long and deeply on the issue of how an author gets his/her work on the bookshelves in the High Street or into the online marketplace of Amazon.
 
What did we think of this self-published work?

The first few pages reminded some of us of Hilary Mantel’s work. The use of the historic present tense certainly engages the reader, but above all the images, stenches, and the stark emotions are writ large on every page.  This powerful portrayal of medieval life stays with the reader throughout the book: the squalor, the plague, the evil, the superstition and the all-pervading and bitterly cruel injustice. We are plunged into the year 1490, and we are in the town of Den Bosch, famously the home of Hieronymus Bosch (here he becomes ‘Jerome’). The Roman Church is the main power in the land (and elsewhere), and this power is enforced though agents, the Inquisitors, who go looking for sin.  They punish it ruthlessly with vile tortures and hideous machines.

Jerome, the hard-working artist, is married to Aleyt, and at first they seem like a nice couple albeit surrounded by a chaotic and thoroughly nasty world. But all is not what it seems. She loves Hameel, another local artist and lifelong friend of Jerome. Also living in the house is the stupid servant girl Mary, who is far from discreet about what she has seen and heard. It’s an explosive situation. Now enter the Inquisitor Jacomo, whose commission from Rome is to establish the town as a regional centre for inquisitorial work, and especially to make an up-to-date Inquisitorial Dungeon with the aid of the skills of the local bell-maker. Now add to this the Abbess Dominica, who maintains a public face of piety and as a wise governor of her convent whilst secretly being gluttonous, avaricious and manipulative.  She hates Jerome, who makes no secret of his insight into her true character.

It is a gripping tale that cannot be told in the few paragraphs of this page. The book itself is hard to put down. There are many twists and turns in the storyline. We all enjoyed it. The plot is carefully-woven and logical; there are no loose ends. As I read it a second time, it seemed almost mathematical.  Parts of it are charged with cruelty and gore, and some people might put the book aside for that reason. But not we of the Monthly Book Group: we are inured, habituated, seasoned readers of the shocking.

The most obvious theme is betrayal: lovers betray each other, the Abbess betrays the Church and God, and Hameel betrays Jerome in the manner of Judas Iscariot. But there is also forgiveness: Jerome forgives Hameel in the end, in the manner of Christ himself.  Ironically, the Inquisitor Jacomo shows himself to be a man of integrity: he is incorruptible and capable of admitting that he made a mistake. Jerome is preoccupied with his work and his weird dreams; his sexual energy and hatred of the hypocrisy of the church seem to be given full expression in his paintings. The rest the characters are all, in one way or another, dodgy.

The author’s recreation of the medieval world reminded some of Chaucer. Whilst we have yet no means of time travelling, serious academic scholars of the medieval world present a view which is not very different from that portrayed in this book (e.g. Daron Burrows’ The Life of St Clement).
We discussed the title. Would readers browsing the bookshop ‘get it’? Is Bosch’s work well enough known? Probably ‘yes’, and the design on the cover would lure them to it anyway, if they had an interest in historical novels at all.

Rather little is known of the real history of the time, and the author has exercised his creative talents to a full extent. There is much evidence of underlying research. A historical novel generally attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past era.  This book seems to do that very well.

Apart from Hilary Mantel, comparisons of this work were made with The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, the novels of Haruki Murakami, and Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999).

As it stands, it would translate easily into a film or play, and perhaps a graphic novel. It is rich in imagery, and the dialogue is well-crafted.