27/3/2014 “CUTTING FOR STONE” by ABRAHAM VERGHESE

I woke up suddenly.

Frankincense drifting in the air, mingling with the strains of Ethiopian music and the fragrance of Ethiopian coffee….where could I be? 

Someone jabbed me in the ribs, said there was a blogger crisis, and told me to grab a pen…ah yes, I had nodded off. I knew that third bottle had been ambitious…

It was March at the Monthly Book Group, and the book was “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese (2009).

A nurse had recommended it to the proposer, who was himself in the medical profession. And the well-informed medical content of the book had appealed to him immensely. There was a very informative section on fistula medicine, and the character Shiva’s major work in this field. The proposer had heard Dr Catherine Hamlin, a pioneering fistula surgeon in Ethiopia, talk in Edinburgh, which made it very meaningful.

He, like others amongst us, had heard Ethiopia described as the most beautiful country in the world, which again added allure to the book. So did his familiarity with most of the book’s settings - in Kerala in India, the Bronx and Queens in New York, and of course with Stone’s training in Edinburgh.

He felt Verghese wrote with much compassion and empathy, maintaining tension and suspense as he wove the different story lines together. The twists and turns of the medical stories mirrored and illuminated the twists and turns of life as a whole. His observations both of people and of places were vivid, full of description and detail, and some of the best that he had come across. He enjoyed the wide variety of realistic characters. The book had captivated him from the opening paragraphs, when we hear of a nun giving birth.

Verghese had been born in Addis Ababa in 1955, to Indian parents recruited by the Emperor Haile Selassie to teach in Ethiopia. He grew up near the capital and began his medical training there. When the Emperor was deposed, Verghese briefly joined his parents who had moved to the United States because of the war. He worked as an orderly in a hospital before completing his medical education in India.

After graduation, he left India for a medical residency in the United States and initially found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him. However, he progressed and became heavily involved in the stressful work of caring for AIDS patients. He then took a break, cashing in his retirement plan to study writing full time in Iowa. He now combined a Professorship at Stanford on the Theory and Practice of Medicine with a very successful writing career.

Amongst his wide range of influences were A.J. Cronin’s “The Citadel” (see discussion 28/3/13), Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” and Conan Doyle. The lengthy acknowledgements at the end of the book revealed Verghese’s very wide and rich range of cultural reference, even if it were showboating a little to draw such explicit attention to it.

The lengthy and explicit passages on surgery featured strongly in our initial discussion. For some they were too long, too gruesome, or too boring, distracting attention from the main story. Others felt they marked the book out as exceptional, so clearly expressing his love and passion for medicine. For these readers he brilliantly depicted the bone and gristle and sinew of the operations. And yet others simply skipped the medical  passages.

So not much agreement there, nor was there on the characters. Some felt that they were very well drawn. Others felt they were rather weak with little real feelings. Genet in particular was cited, who had the most interesting but tormented life, but about whose feelings we learned very little.

But was that because we only saw her through Marion’s eyes, and Marion idealized her but was frustrated by his inability to get close to her? And didn’t we learn a lot about Stone’s torment, and to a lesser extent Hema’s?

We felt Hema was the best drawn of the female characters. She had had to move from India to Ethiopia to progress in medicine. She had become a dominant person in Ethiopia, controlling the hospital and medical procedures.

The issue arose in discussion of whether Hema was an imagined character, or a projection of the Australian doctor Catherine Hamlin. This might account for the greater strength of writing about Hema than the other female characters. Or was rather Shiva modelled on Hamlin? However, we agreed that the historical genesis of a character or plot was not relevant to judging the quality of a book.

Another feature was that none of the characters achieved satisfactory relationships, with the exception, eventually, of Hema and Ghosh. This was sad, and perhaps linked to the pervasive sense in the book that sex was dangerous. Many characters were destroyed or seriously damaged by sex: Mary Praise, Genet, Marion and indirectly Shiva, Thomas Stone and so on. The genital mutilation of Genet was one of the most powerful and shocking of such scenes, and showed an unflinching willingness to confront unpleasant physical issues.

Thus was the danger of sex the moral - conscious or unconscious - of the book? The idea that sex leads to death was of powerful archetypal origin (see discussion of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” 25/7/07).

Marion’s sexual inhibition was not easy to comprehend at a literal level. He turned down the Probationer, and decided not to pursue Tsige when she put him on hold, but saved himself for years and years for what proved to be a nihilistic and destructive coupling with Genet. Given that Marion was obviously a largely autobiographical figure, there might be an autobiographical basis for this, but that did not constitute a convincing explanation.

Meanwhile Marion’s twin brother Shiva, from whom he had been sundered at birth, was unthinkingly promiscuous, and named after a god. This led us to wonder if the author had in mind some notion of dualism, of illustrating different aspects of humanity, through the trope of the divided twins. However, if so it was not too clear to us what the idea was. Nor was it clear if there were some intended notion of universality in giving a man, Marion, a female name. And was the choice of name of “Genet” for the woman he loved, echoing the writer Jean Genet, also meant to have significance?

Despite these hints that the writer might have high literary ambitions, there was some enjoyable humour in the novel, e.g. in the description of the cricket team. There were fine homilies, such as Stone’s question about what treatment was administered by ear (reassurance) or his injunction never to operate on a patient on the day of his death. More generally we liked the strong Indian influence in the book.

So, taking the book as a whole, what were its strengths and weaknesses? Most felt that the first section of the book in Missing Hospital, climaxing with Mary Praise’s dramatic delivery and death, was outstanding. One, for example, thought that the book showed fantastic imagination, especially the first 100 pages. It was rich in references to different cultures, and totally gripping in its depiction of the panic when they operated on the Sister. Generally the later American sections were less powerful than those  set in Ethiopia.

The plot, and in particular the use of coincidence and the neatness of the ending, attracted criticism from some. Others liked the overall coming of age structure of the book, the way in which the twins and other characters influenced the lives of each others, and how external events affected them all. Perhaps you needed to cut the author a bit of slack on plotting given the type of novel he was writing.

And it was a pleasure to see another Indian author writing an expansive, compassionate,  ebullient, self-confident novel, at a time when so many British writers were writing cramped and overly self-conscious works.

Yours truly felt he had done quite well to record all this high-flown stuff, and was just dropping off for another well-earned and well-sedated snooze, when rudely awakened by laughter.

“Everybody says that the Ecstasy of St. Theresa is an orgasmic pose!”

Run that by me again???!......

And Ethiopian Airlines are the best, despite the odd hijacking!

No, I must have been dreaming….

27/2/2014 “A NAME IN BLOOD” by MATT REES

There is an assumption that those attending Monthly Book Group meetings have read the book. Sometimes members find little more than unintended humour in it, but almost always there is something. Often the proposer shows that there is more than the member realized. Sometimes another member provides enlightenment. Commonly the doubts of the first 50 pages are dispelled or put into perspective. No such reservations were associated with “A Name in Blood” by Matt Rees (2012). There was a sense that folk had enjoyed the read. They were relaxed rather than enquiring or confrontational.

The proposer introduced the author as having made a name for himself by writing crime novels set in Palestine. Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet had influenced him. “A Name in Blood” was, however, not chosen by the proposer because of these earlier works, but rather as a whim in a bookshop, and why not?

To write the book Rees learnt to paint, studied the artist who inspired the book, visited galleries throughout the world and was taught sword fencing. What he then produced was a novel about power, love, duplicity and patronage. His use of language was effective and sometimes shone.

Thus the artist, Michelangelo Merisi (called Caravaggio after his home town) first sees the female he would come to love:

“The soles of her bare feet were turned upward as she leaned forward to brush. They were soiled in such striations of black brown and grey that he could taste the dirt on his tongue”.

To add to the significance of this vivid sentence, Caravaggio saw her when he was visiting a Cardinal in Rome and she was his menial employee.

The proposer particularly liked the challenging conversations between the artist and his patrons. These were superficially the idle creation of the author. However, nothing can obscure the contrast between the sacred subjects he was commissioned to paint and, the actual works, which for the papal aristocracy of the late Renaissance were almost heretical. Often he used prostitutes as models for sacred subjects, and did little to disguise their earthy appearance, or indeed their identity. Caravaggio was revealed in his works to be brave to the point of folly, but saved by his sincerity and his genius. Rees was thus on sure ground when he explored Caravaggio’s art through invented conversations between a sophisticated religious elite and a rebellious artist.

We had descriptions of Rome in this period:  the beauty, the sin, the grace, the vulgarity and the cruelty. The proposer enjoyed all this and everyone agreed.

We were then invited to comment. What was the title about? Was this literally to do with the signature on a painting?  Or possibly, it was thought, to reflect the gradual change from the innocence of youth to the braggadoccio of the adolescent to the imminent prospect of death, which dominates the later chapters of the novel. As to the life of Caravaggio, the group discussed his paintings, noted that he fell out of fashion for a long period, and only re-emerged in the 20^th century as a true great.

What of the detective in Mr Rees? DNA tests suggest Caravaggio was buried in Porto Ercole, so was he in fact on the return journey to Rome? Why did the Knights of Malta cooperate if Rees was to blame one of their number – Roero - for executing a great artist in return for the release of the rather doubtful Fabrizio? Why was the death not investigated by one of the artist’s important friends? This prompted one of our members to raise doubts about historical novels. Is your problem whether simply to read the novel and judge it as such or check it against historical record? “It is not just my problem, it is the problem” was the reply. The group discussed this and with reference to Walter Scott and his successors as exponents of this genre. The conclusion was that we make our own choice. Did this book ring true? Yes. Let each of us decide if there is a need to know more.

The early work of the artist was contrasted with the later. The sexual preferences of the artist may have been important to some at the time, but not to all. Derek Jarman’s film from 1986 was referred to, but he had an agenda. Caravaggio’s early work had a homoerotic quality, but his later work was religious, with messages not of a sexual nature.

What, belatedly, of the characters? The main relationship is between Caravaggio and Lena. He is presented with the classic “behave and live with me, or go off and die”. The way he goes off and dies could have been taken from an Italian opera. We have the wager on the outcome of the tennis match, the numerous scenes where he is urged to pay the debt, the elegant development of the feud until a duel with Ranuncio becomes not foolish but necessary. Having been engulfed in this he does not see Lena to try to explain. He flees. This sets up the remainder of his life.

And details? Do we appreciate his work less than those four centuries ago? Yes. However, the proposer was of Italian extraction. Did he understand the work better than we did? Possibly, but we all have to understand the Bible and Greek and Roman myths to understand so much of European culture.

The proposer drew our attention to a place name in the book whose shared surname will lead some to rename his house as such in future. We noted that the camera obscura was used to help portrait painting. We also read about the make up of a tennis ball of the period, which was self indulgent, as was the detail in the duel scene. One member thought that the lack of semi colons made the prose too staccato. Did the lead in the paint make Caravaggio “hyper”? Possibly.

It was hard to focus on the novel itself, as opposed to the art, history, religion etc, and if we digressed from Matt Rees the novelist, who cares! We enjoyed ourselves.

30/1/2014 “THE BRIDGE” by IAIN BANKS

Iain Banks considered this to be his best novel. He said ‘Definitely the intellectual of the family, it’s the one that went away to University and got a first’. But it is not the easiest one to read. It mostly deals with the thoughts and dreams of Alex, victim of a car crash who is comatose for most of the book. The crash itself is described in the first two pages. One of our members skipped this bit, thinking it was the preface. Dear reader, don’t make the same mistake. But whether one misses this or not, it takes a while – perhaps 70 pages – before the penny drops and structure and plot dawn on the reader.

The bridge is a fictionalized and exaggerated version of the Forth Rail Bridge, the huge cantilever construction in red-painted steel, built in 1890, connecting Edinburgh with Fife. The bridge in the novel is much bigger, vast and multilayered, very wide, apparently a world to itself with its own totalitarian government. The bridge is a powerful metaphor for society or possibly for the author’s psyche. Where does the bridge start and end? No-one knows; perhaps it doesn’t end on dry land at all.  Later, when the protagonist travels for days along it, he passes through different climatic zones, so we may conclude that the bridge is at least hundreds of km long.

In real life the protagonist is a young business man from Glasgow called Alex. He likes drink, drugs and fast cars. When still a young student in Edinburgh he falls in love with one Andrea Cramond, an advocate’s daughter. But she goes to live in France and enters into another relationship. He hits the drink and crashes his souped-up Jaguar. When in a coma he lives on the bridge as the amnesiac John Orr, periodically meeting his psychiatrist Dr Joyce. Sometimes another character called The Barbarian pops up; one who rants and raves in broad Scots dialect, often incoherently – something like a Scottish Caliban. The key to understanding the book is that Alex, John Orr and The Barbarian are one and the same, each representing a different facet of one man’s psyche. To make matters more complicated, the Barbarian has an enigmatic being on his shoulder called ‘The Familiar’. Not, we thought, the famous chip on the shoulder that Scots are supposed to have, but a representation of, well, what exactly? There was no consensus. One of us thought it was a phallus, but perhaps it was a mentor, a guardian angel, a parrot, or the id. Or even a representation of a controlling force, someone suggested the government in Westminster.

John’s adventures on the bridge are bizarre. At first, he lives a comfortable life in which he is provided for. He undergoes treatment for his amnesia by a psychiatrist and dream analyst called Dr Joyce, and to please the good doctor he invents dreams. Opinions were divided about whether there was supposed to be a real life Dr Joyce who was treating him during intermissions from the coma, or whether it is all a dream during the coma (we digressed: can comatose people dream? Can comatose people make up dreams during dreams? Can comatose people be considered amnesiac, since there are completely unconscious?). The invented dreams are so vividly recalled and detailed that Joyce suspects they are made up and tells John that he wants to change the treatment to hypnotherapy. When John refuses he is banished to a lower level of the bridge, where privileges and personal clothing are perfunctorily withdrawn. However, the beautiful Abberlaine Arrol rescues him; she is none other than the bridge’s version of his real life lover Andrea; she provides clothes and an apartment; they make love. During the act of love he fantasizes about girders, women’s underwear and other engineering structures and concludes ‘I feel like I have just fucked the bridge’.  Subtle.

Life on the bridge has strange twists and turns. One day, the bridge is buzzed by aircraft that strangely leave messages in the sky, in braille (should it be Morse code?); and a few days later barrage balloons appear, apparently to protect the bridge against further attack. Like many parts of the book, this appears to have no particular relevance to the plot, unless to give weight to the idea that governments frequently exaggerate external threats for political reasons.  In fact, the real-life Forth Bridge was similarly attacked at the start of World War II; something Banks would have known about because his father was a naval officer and worked at the Rosyth naval dockyard, the real target of the WWII bombers.

He stows away on a train, which travels far along the bridge to a war zone. Plenty of blood and gore occurs, but there are humorous passages too. The author’s imagination runs wildest in this area.

Finally, he comes out of his coma, and I won’t spoil the ending by telling you what happens. Perhaps the ending is a bit trite. One member found this last page had been torn from his second hand bookshop copy. Perhaps its owner thought the ending not worthy of the book.

What did we think of it all? It is a work of vivid imagination and rich description, plumbing the psychological depths of alienation. It was his third book (published in 1986). Later, he was to move into science fiction, and we see the start of that sci-fi interest here (he clearly had much fun writing about the invented dreams, the balloons, the flying knife, the war). The real life scenes, based in Edinburgh and Fife may be by contrast rather flat; his imagination comes into play when he deals with adventures on the bridge. The book is said by most reviewers to be a love story, but its power is not really in romantic matters (although the two sex scenes are some of the most interesting you’ll ever read). The love story takes second place to the adventures on the bridge; but the dreams are riveting; the characters in the consulting room are reminiscent of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, the 1985 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The situation that John Orr encounters on the bridge reminds one of Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle. The psychological parts are both Freudian and Jungian, and at one point the author makes reference to RD Laing, author of works on the existential analysis of personal alienation, and the classic 1960 book on schizophrenia The Divided Self.

The division of the book into geological sections plus metaphormosis, metamorpheus and metamorphosis is not very helpful, possibly pretentious. What are we to make of them? Alex begins as a student of geology – the geological periods used as section headings are Triassic (250 to 200 million years ago) and Eocene (56 to 34 million years ago). Possibly something can be read into this. The Triassic was a time of transition after a particularly nasty mass extinction. The Eocene saw the dawn of a new fauna with modern mammals and the rise of grasses; but really, what’s the point? Of course, Morpheus was the Greek god of dreams, so therefore a bit more relevant.

Is the work to any extent autobiographical? His father was a naval military man and his mother was a professional ice skater. What impressions did they make on him?  His early life was spent in North Queensferry, in the shadow of the Forth Road Bridge. Viewed from close quarters, we all agree that the bridge seems massive, oppressive, and the giant girders are unforgettable; even from a distance the raw engineering structure is awesome, iconic, likely to leave a deep impression on practically any young lad. The author was a young man when Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, otherwise known as Faslane, became home of the Trident nuclear submarines (the Peace Camp was established in 1982): this may have helped to form his left-leaning politics, and sparked an interest in the alienated state of mind and the defence of the state, both themes in the book. After writing the book his life seems to mirror that of the fictional Alex. He collected fast cars, he had a car crash, he had an interrupted personal life. His characters like to rant about the politics of the day just as he did for much of his life (he was an active supporter of Scottish Independence, hater of everything to do with Margaret Thatcher and he campaigned with others to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq). I’m sure these things will interest his biographers (he died of cancer in 2013).

His place as a major literary figure in the English speaking world is assured. Perhaps he will be best remembered for his first novel, Wasp Factory or for his science fiction. But The Bridge will challenge, amuse, and intrigue readers for years to come.

28/11/2013 “CANADA” by RICHARD FORD

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Having been promised that a bottle of Lagavulin 16 would be on the table, your sharp-as-a-tack correspondent dragged himself away from Robbie’s, and the sunshine on Leith. Soon I was making a rare appearance at the Monthly Book Group, meeting in misty Morningside.

I was just relaxing into the first slug of the amber nectar when the host said “Canada?” “No” I replied, “never with a malt…” and then the frosty stares made me grab my pen…

Introducing “Canada” (2012) the proposer said that Richard Ford was an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works were the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs. He was associated with the ‘Dirty Realism’ movement, which includes Raymond Carver (see discussion 26/11/08). He was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1944, and changed from the study of law to that of creative writing. Like David Lodge, he had combined University posts with his writing career. He had won many prizes, notably the Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day.

Ford has described his sense of language as "a source of pleasure in itself—all of its corporeal qualities, its syncopations, moods, sounds, the way things look on the page".

For example, when asked why this novel was called ‘Canada’ he said ‘“Canada” – the word – possessed for me (and still does) what I think of as a plush suppleness. I like the three softened “a” sounds ...  sandwiched among those muted, staccato'd consonants. I like its pleasing, dactylic gallop on my tongue. I like its rather stalwart, civic assertiveness to the foreigner's eye’.

 [Run that one by me again? Dactylic gallop??!! Was he serious, or was he throwing dirt in the critic’s eye? The only answer was surreptitiously to award myself another generous measure of Islay’s finest. Now that’s what I call plush suppleness….]

So why did the proposer choose it? Well ….. he went to Waterstone’s to buy ‘The Secret Race’, and it was a “buy one get a second half price” offer. He had read Ford’s ‘Sportswriter’ and thought it so-so, but saw ‘Canada’ and thought maybe he deserved a second chance.

And then the opening lines had him hooked: “First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then the murders, which happened later”.

“Canada” much impressed the Group. The book was unusual in a number of ways. The most obvious was that the author kept telling you what was about to happen before he described the event, as above, thus removing, at least superficially, suspense. Yet surprisingly this technique did not reduce the reader’s interest in what followed. If anything it enhanced it, as we wanted to know the detail of what happened. And the detail of feeling and description was Ford’s forte. He had the ability to conjure up the fabric of a scene so convincingly that you felt you were there. He created the very texture and rhythm of human interaction, the way that people thought as they dealt with each other, the way they spoke, the quirky little images of a scene that embed themselves in the memory.

Other writers – such as George Eliot or Henry James – like to analyse human interaction in similar detail, but they could be quite hard work to read without attention wandering. However, Ford was not like that at all. You always wanted to read more, to find out more. He was very accessible, and if the book was relatively long it could quite accurately be described as a page-turner.

To achieve this was literary craftsmanship of a highest order, and reflected a long apprenticeship. Part of the effect was due to his feeling for language and rhythm. He was very adept in not wasting words, and in using short sentences, paragraphs and chapters if needed to hold the reader’s attention. He did not bombard the reader with descriptive passages, but illuminated his work with the occasional striking image.

The structure of the book was unusual. It was divided into three un-named parts, all narrated in the first person by Dell. The first was set in the mid-to-late 1950s in Great Falls, Montana. It dealt with the build-up to a bank robbery by Dell’s parents – his plausible, self-confident and unsuccessful father and his introverted, literary mother. The second described how Dell was spirited over the border to a pioneer town in rural Canada. His new life, as an odd-job man for a mysterious American fellow-exile, soon led to his unwitting involvement as an accomplice in a ruthless double murder. Soon he was again spirited away, this time to a different part of Canada. The short third part, set in present times, sketched in the intervening years in which Dell had become a lecturer in English literature at a Canadian college. After a fair amount of philosophising about what Dell has learnt from his experiences, and about how he survived them, it dealt with Dell’s visit to his dying twin sister in Minneapolis.

Ford’s characterization was very strong. Dell, the narrator and centre of the book, was characteristic of the child of a military family always on the move - very self-reliant and with no friends other than his twin sister. From the outset he was an outsider, a loner, an observer looking through the glass into life and not actively engaged. Dell was attracted as a child to chess and bees – both zones of order. Dell was very accepting and did not blame his parents for what happened. Nor was he scared. He did not let things affect him much, did not allow himself to go under. Sh*t happened, and at end he emerged. Despite the shocks of the robbery and the murders, it was remarkable what a very orthodox and ordered life Dell had lived.

Dell’s sister Berner, to whom he was very close, was very different – rebellious, rushing into things, chaotic. Three times married, she could only live  “on the margins of conventional life”. Berner was unequivocally against her parents at time of robbery, but took to calling herself by her father’s name – Bev – once he was dead. This could be seen as an attempt to reconcile herself to her past, and to her father. However, we knew little about her life after the robbery, as the twins split up aged fifteen.

Dell’s parents were so well drawn you felt you knew that you would recognize them if you saw them in a shop, or walking down the street. We could identify with the problems faced by demobbed members of the Forces such as his father. We also recognized the man who thought he could get away with every scam. His mother had made two cataclysmic mistakes. She had married an unsuitable man when pregnant, instead of putting the twins up for adoption. She had joined in the robbery when she was already planning to leave her husband. In both cases she had weakly caved in. It was intriguing how the parents  had rationalized the robbery into something less than a crime, and amusing how they bungled its execution.

The figure of Reminger seemed a little less plausible, with something of a Gatsby imitation about him. However, Reminger’s character and motivation gained plausibility when he committed the murders. The half-caste Charley Quarters was a very striking creation, but again not wholly plausible, particularly when he was used as the vehicle to recount Reminger’s past.

Ford’s sense of place was very strong. Fifties USA was convincingly evoked, and Canada was brilliantly realized. This was pioneer Canada – lawless life on the margins, carnal and brutal, disfigured by decay and detritus as ghost villages rotted away. It was as different from the middle-class Montana that Dell knew, and the tourist Canada that we knew, as can be imagined.  It was remarkable how Dell remained positive despite living in this desolate borderland.

Crossing the border from Montana into Canada had a symbolic resonance. It took Dell away from his childhood into his manhood, and America became a foreign country much as childhood does. Yet there were some parallels between the two. On each occasion a father figure detonated change. In Montana it was Dell’s real father. In Canada it was Reminger, another chess-player, who asked Dell to play the role of his son in the confrontation that led to murder. Oddly, both fathers were bombers – his father in the airforce during the war, and Reminger in his activist period.

We could not resist discussing relations between Canada and the USA. These had often been tense, as Americans saw Canada as British North America and unfinished business. The Americans attacked Canada during the1812 war, and continued to make plans to invade Canada until well into the twentieth century.

So what were the main themes of “Canada”?

[Alas the group was not finished, but the Lagavulin was. What a great invention the screw top is, allowing you to sneak into your glass a few fingers of red from your secretly stashed bottle…]

The proposer empathized with the book’s sense that the accidental, the random, was dominant in life, and that there was no such thing as fate. This was the “sh*t happens” school of philosophy. It emerged very clearly from the events in Parts 1 and 2, such as the carcase deal gone wrong, the decision to rob the bank, Dell and Aunt Mildred fleeing the authorities etc. The lives of Dell and Berner would have been very different if it had not been for these events. The book could be seen as illuminating the error of the human impulse first to try to control our ‘fate’, and then retrospectively to try to make sense of our life, and give it some importance.

As the narrator put it on the last page: “I’ve often thought that where I live here, now – in the screwy way of things – was meant to be. But I simply don’t believe in these ideas. I believe in what you see being most of what there is, as I’ve taught my students, and that life is passed along to us empty.” However, the narrator was not entirely consistent, as when he said movingly of his father when he turned to crime: “I’ve thought that a long-suppressed potential in him had suddenly worked itself into visibility on his face. He was becoming who he was and who he was always supposed to be. He’d simply had to wear down the other layers to find out who he was.” But then artists did not have to be consistent.

Related to this, Ford seemed to believe that good and evil are not opposing forces but rather a matter of accident. “It’s best to see our life as and the activities that ended it, as two sides of one thing that have to be held in the mind simultaneously.... the side that was normal and the side that was disastrous” and  “how close evil is to the normal goings-on that have nothing to do with evil.” This might be a debatable position, but the novel certainly brought out powerfully the sense that committing a crime was an easy thing to do, that it was easy to fall through the ice.

Part 3 was the only part to attract some adverse comment. One member indeed felt that the book would have been better without it. Parts 1 and 2 were written in the tone and language of a 15 year old telling the story, not the language of someone reflecting in his sixties. A much older man could never have remembered all the detail with which Dell was writing. Perhaps Part 3 had been an afterthought? There was a hint or two in the acknowledgements that it had proved difficult to finish the book.

Another felt that the narrator was becoming too autobiographical in tone in Part 3. Ford’s childhood had been disrupted by his father’s heart attack, and he had spent much time thereafter with his grandfather, a hotel owner and retired prize-fighter. Had the novelist achieved sufficient distance from his creation?

Another felt that all the home-spun philosophizing in Part 3 was excessive. The author had forgotten the principle of “show not tell”. And it was ill judged to attempt to do his own literary criticism, in the clumsy guise of describing how his literature students reacted to his life story. But just as this reader was becoming irked, the author switched back to story-telling mode as he told the story of Dell crossing the border to meet his dying sister. And immediately the reader was hooked again, as Ford effortlessly conjured up the meeting, with all the little nuances of dialogue that reveal feelings, and all the little details of the scene that snag in the memory. And, for him, this got much closer to felt life than did Ford the philosopher. It brought back what an exceptional writer Ford was.

One member pointed out that Dell’s later life was certainly consistent with what had gone before. He had married an accountant, and had no children. You could say he had taken an “intellectual diazepam” to the strife of life. He had become a teacher, an observer and analyzer of life.

And Part 3 was also used to explore our urge to make sense of what has happened in our lives, to post-rationalize events, to think we have been in control. This urge might be self-deceiving, but was also very strong: “normal life was what I was trying to preserve for myself. Through all these memorable events ... - it is all of a piece, like a musical score with movements, or a puzzle, wherein I am seeking to restore and maintain my life in a whole and acceptable state, regardless of the frontiers I’ve crossed. I know it’s only me that makes those connections. But to try not to make them is to commit yourself to the waves that toss you and dash you against the rocks of despair.....”

The group then started debating how realistic it was that Dell would have sought so little contact with his twin in later life, or that his father would have made no effort to contact his children after coming out of prison. And should Reminger not have killed Dell too as the witness? Hold on, these were not real people and you had to give the author some artistic leeway…..

Basta! Yours truly put the top on the pen, pushed the now mysteriously empty bottle of red under the table, and lurched out into the murky November evening. Up ahead I could see yellow lights still shining in the windows of Bennets. Yes! I upped my pace, to a dactylic gallop….

31/10/2013: “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe

We arrived at Number 42; it was All Hallows’ Eve. Trick or treat?

Why does no-one invite vampires to parties? They are a pain in the neck!

Where do mummies go for a swim? The dead sea!

Boom! Boom!

Alas, no sweeties were forthcoming from the resident, hiding metaphorically in the back room with the lights off. However, in keeping with the current book, he produced some Yams to eat with the beverage of choice. As Hallowe’en is a night to remember the dead saints, martyrs and the faithful, perhaps it is appropriate that we read a contrary book that deals with the passing of a period in African culture, with due reference to many unfamiliar customs and personages.

Who was Chinua Achebe, asked our proposer? He was born on 16^th November 1930 in Ogidi in the Lower Niger Delta. He was brought up in a community still following many Igbo (or Ibo) traditions that he describes in the book. However, his father (Albert) was a Christian missionary and in 1930 the community was mainly Christian, run by a District Officer .The Colonial State of Nigeria had been formed in 1914 and became independent in 1960, 2 years after this book was published. His literary influences included Conrad, Hemingway and Green, but this is a book written very much from the African perspective. The proposer of the book pointed out that Achebe described later his disillusionment with Conrad’s racism, writing "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'". Achebe sided with the “unattractive beings jumping up and down on the riverbank, making horrid faces.”

After writing “Things Fall Apart” in 1956, he completed the trilogy with “No Longer at Ease” then “Arrow of God”, describing the village life as the 20^th century progressed.  In 1967 Biafra seceded, with Achebe supporting the new state and taking a post as an ambassador. When the Biafran war ended in 1970, he accepted an appointment at the University of Nigeria. Later he moved to the University of Massachusetts, but returned to Nigeria to become Deputy President of the Peoples Redemption Party. The party was banned following a military coup in 1984. In 1990 he was paralysed in a car accident. Nevertheless he took posts at further US universities. He died on 21^st March 2013 in Boston. Achebe is generally regarded as the father of African literature and is a major 20th century figure.

Why did the proposer choose this book? He noted the influence it had had on subsequent African writers, such as Chimamanda Adichie.  He had also spoken to William Boyd about Things Fall Apart after a book festival talk. As one well versed in Nigerian literature, Boyd said this is a truly ground breaking novel showing intelligence, vigour and compassion.

What then was the general view of our group? How can we consider anew a book that is a cornerstone of so many university and school curricula, and has been widely analysed from European, African and many other perspectives for over fifty years? Your daunted scribe noted one web site that gave not only a detailed history of criticism of Achebe and this book in particular, but also listed 55 substantial reference texts, each of which was written by someone surely more learned than the gathered company. Copies are piled high in the local bookshop in anticipation of the next group of university freshers eager to change the world. (Do students still do that, I thought they just wanted a job? Ed.) Another noted that there were 38 conferences on Achebe's work on the 50th anniversary of publication, echoing our discussion of Small World the previous month.

The story revolves around a tragic hero, Okonkwo, a respected warrior of the Umuofia clan, the son of an idle father, and father to a son, Nwoye, whom he hopes will adopt his values rather than those of his father.  Although this book is universally regarded as the great and ground-breaking African novel written from the inside, one suggested it has more general relevance, applicable for example to MacKay Brown’s treatment of Orkney tradition or even the microscopic Pinter plays. This is the general theme of change and threat brought from outside to a relatively closed community. Things fall apart, indeed.

However, the life of the village is distinctly in the African or Igbo tradition, and presented with straightforwardness that does not judge. Some of the rituals and customs may seem less than humane to our European eyes. For example, Okonkwo kills his adopted ‘charge’ Ikemefuna, won from another village, and a great companion to his natural son, on the advice of a village elder and the local deities. Is this civilized behaviour, and if so in whose civilization?  There was disagreement amongst us. Some felt that such a killing was intrinsically bad, but others felt this was making a Western judgment. Certainly, in the UK we retained the death penalty until comparatively recently, so is this so distinct? (“You who build these altars now, To sacrifice these children, You must not do it anymore, A scheme is not a vision”)

The proposer continued serious discussion, noting that the main part of the book has an African rhythm but the end has the tempo of English literature, perhaps coinciding deliberately with the arrival of the colonial power. He saw the book as being driven by the relationships of the main character with the other well characterised residents and incomers. However, he saw the main purpose being to evoke the village and its traditions, to show in a fair way that it was not worse than the colonial power. Is this the case? Certainly individuals within the colonial power, from the clergy to commissioner, were shown as less than perfect individuals, but to what extent is that true of their society?  (In a recently aired BBC programme (see below) one talked of wishing the missionaries would arrive!)

So Achebe paints a rational value system, at least in African terms. Writing from the viewpoint of the natives is not unique. What he is able to do is present a balanced account. He has a beguiling simplicity of language, a similarity in prose style to Hemingway. He explains the simple traditions and superstitions. He makes quite a bit about the rather male or macho style of the main figure in a patriarchal society.

The book is titled after a phrase in a Yeats poem (“The Second Coming”) and it was suggested that Yeats was a significant influence on the book. Yeats thought that one historical revolution of his great wheel would take about 2,000 years and then end in chaos (“things fall apart”) to be followed by another antithetical cycle. Aneche is relating this idea to the destruction of traditional Ibo culture by the arrival of the new culture of the white man. Masks are a major component in Yeats’ philosophy, and masks play a big role in the book. For example, Okonkwo puts on a mask of macho masculinity so as not to appear weak like his father. More literally, masks are worn to transform the elders into spirits (this is perhaps similar to when a judge puts on a wig). And tearing off such a mask triggers the dénouement of the novel. Birds are also used extensively in the imagery of the book, as in Yeats.

Why did Okonkwo commit suicide? (“Things fall apart.”) There were several possible factors, remorse at his killing of Ikemefuna and subsequent depression, the failure of others in the tribe to support him against encroaching colonialism and the consequent passing of their culture, the fact that he had to resort to violence.  One suggested it was self-sacrifice to save the village. Ultimately, he felt he had no choice. Although he was a manly brute, never wishing to appear weak or indeed imitate his father, he kept going back to the cave to consult the oracle. In Yeats’ terms, the character is the struggle between man and mask. Like all of us, he struggles to be consistent.

At this point discussion diverged from the specific to the general. During the 20^th century many non-Western countries had experienced a huge growth in GDP, notably China and India. Why had Africa been left behind? Was this the fault of the colonial powers? Many factors were discussed. Was there a lack of a history of advanced development? Do we impose Western standards on what we call development? Was it due to a comparative lack of evolution in education, to climate, to comparative lack of natural resource? After all, coincident with publication of the book oil was discovered in the Niger Delta in the 1950’s and is the main source of African GDP. One member suggested the dominant influence of corruption and indeed Wiki suggests that corrupt regimes and the complicity of multinationals were major factors in holding Africa back. A lack of corruption is essential for society to flourish. Others talked of curiosity, drive, long term strategy and planning, tradition and superstition.  Yet another suggested it was all yet ‘our’ fault. To quote, “Why does the sun never set on the English empire?” “God would never trust an Englishman in the dark”. Boom, boom and thrice boom, and yes Spaeth did say ‘Englishman’, I fear, as we approach the Scottish referendum. Someone stressed that Achebe wrote the book to redress the balance, to put a true picture of African life. “The Empire writes back”.

We returned to more direct discussion of the book. Nwoye questions the tradition of throwing away or killing twins. Some argued that a society that survives has to have survival values, and that twins in general were weaker and so should not survive.  Are all traditions and superstitions against curiosity, and hence against development?

Ah yes, said one, he is depicting the missionary position! Boom, boom, boom and four times boom! Alas my copy wasn’t illustrated but we can but visualize this controversial interjection. It was said that some became Christians because there was something missing in their previous way of life. Many Igbo people did not agree with some of the superstitions (such as the twins) and perhaps saw something in the new Christianity. As one gets older, it becomes more difficult to adapt to change. Okonkwo is straight and traditional, whereas Obierika is much more curious, constantly questioning and ready to survive. Achebe sees himself in the Obierika role. He, like Achebe, displays a combination of pragmatism and adaption.

Turning to patriarchy, Okwonko is loving and feels blessed in his daughters, yet still wishes that his daughter was a man. The attitude to women is ambivalent, talking of men behaving as women as a criticism, yet still loving a daughter, who might better be a man. This society believes in strength in manly ideals. Culture is devious and flexible to survive, BUT culture has to be ambivalent to survive, extolling the virtues of women.

 What of the comparative justice system? Okwondo was exiled. He accepted the guilt, without question. This was a stronger moral code than we have, where our natural reaction is to place the blame on someone else. Read any newspaper or turn on the television! Arguably, the society that is depicted might have flaws, but is not corrupt.

In conclusion, this is a book about a conflict in value systems, each of which has flaws. This is a short, simply written novel, yet very significant This is Achebe’s first novel, and arguably the first great 20^th century novel written from an African perspective. Overall it is simple yet profound. There is a very little ‘purple prose’ and this contributes to the book’s strength.

In passing we also noted that the British Broadcasting Corporation had chosen to follow our lead in selecting not just “Things Fall Apart”, but also Richard Ford’s “Canada” (our next book) for discussion in their broadcast of ‘A Good Read’ on Tuesday October 29^th 2013. Was this coincidence or are the BBC turning to the Monthly Book Group, who post the schedule on the Goodreads website, for ideas? Judge for yourself, dear reader, but continue to follow the authoritative version.

So we returned to the dark might, perhaps fearful of warlocks and witches.

26/9/13 “SMALL WORLD” by David Lodge

 Our book group’s discussion of David Lodge’s satirical campus novel Small World (1984) produced a scenario worthy of inclusion in the novel itself.  It became apparent quite early in the proceedings that the book’s proposer was labouring under the misapprehension that he had asked us to read another novel by David Lodge, Nice Work.  He forlornly brandished the covers of the two books for our inspection, citing an uncanny similarity of appearance.

We had barely recovered our poise after this revelation, and agreed that we would, in fact, discuss Small World, when a late arrival joined the group by taxi from a long luncheon.  In his case, the comic novel he was irrepressibly set on expounding seemed to be Whisky Galore.

Making sense of the ensuing discussion was at times challenging, and to produce a cohesive account of the evening is a task beyond the abilities of this writer.  I will therefore simply outline our more relevant exchanges in the order in which they arose.

David  Lodge’s biographical background was sketched in by the proposer.  Notably relevant were his tenure of a Professorship in English Literature at the University of Birmingham, his additional experience of teaching in American universities, and his literary friendship with Malcolm Bradbury.

There was agreement that the novel, although satirical, was not in all respects an exaggeration of the truth.  There were enough academics and conference-goers in our group with experience of the period in question (the 1970s), to verify Lodge’s portrayal of such events as potpourris of booze, ennui, sex, and tourism.  This was qualified by the lament of scientists present that such was not their way, and that clearly scholars in the humanities were more promiscuous and hedonistic – or at least had more opportunities to be so.

It was observed that universities and academia ran on much more cash-strapped lines nowadays, with attendant pressures on their staff, and that David Lodge was depicting more easy-going times.  

Structure and narrative elements were discussed: one reader pointed out that part one seemed very different from the rest of the novel; another commented on the enjoyable interweaving of different characters and threads; a third on the undisguised use of coincidences (for example Cheryl reading the very book that Persse is seeking).  It was observed that underlying literary references, such as the quest for the Holy Grail, were lightly handled, and exuberant satire was the dominant mode.  Racial stereotyping was commented upon as an easy source of humour.  Overall, one reader felt that Lodge was perhaps trying a bit too hard, and preferred others among his novels, while another thought that this was his best work.  There was some brief discussion of the merits of Nice Work, Changing Places, Deaf Sentence, and his academic book The Art of Fiction.

We discussed the place of Small World within a well-defined genre, the campus novel (although of course the ‘campus’ of this novel is global).  Tom Sharpe, Malcolm Bradbury, Kingsley Amis and Bernard Malamud were invoked.  One reader complained of a certain predictability, but another drew attention to significant differences of approach within the genre.

In so far as Lodge’s characters are used to exemplify different methodological and philosophical approaches to the study of literature, we felt that the satire was quite subdued, and that Leavisite, structuralist, feminist, Freudian, etc approaches were presented with only slight exaggerations.  The function of literary criticism is, however lightly handled, a pervading and serious theme of the book.  We were mostly happy with Philip Swallow’s remarks at the conference as a reasonable everyman’s definition of the function of literary criticism, and one that illuminated our own activity as a group of people meeting to discuss literature.

29/8/13 THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER and THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by MARK TWAIN

 

The proposer began with a brief introduction to the life of Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain. ("Mark Twain" was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line used to measure safe depth for a steamboat.)

He was born in 1835, and grew up in Missouri beside the Mississippi River.  The two books are set in the period of his own childhood, before the American Civil War.  A particularly relevant biographical detail in relation to Huckleberry Finn is that he studied and worked for four years as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.

As a child, the proposer had received a copy of Tom Sawyer as a birthday present (at this point another member of the group brandished his copy adorned with a school prize label – apparently in those days it was considered suitable reading for an eight year old!).  The proposer wanted to see if the books conjured up the excitement he experienced reading them as a boy.  (By contrast, another reader referred to his resistance to Mark Twain and also Dickens as a youngster, when they were pushed at him by a well-meaning literary aunt.  He thought however that a big part of the problem lay in the small type of the editions current at the time.)

The proposer also wanted to test our response to the view that ‘Tom Sawyer is great fun, Huckleberry Finn is great literature’. 

In support of the second assertion, he drew attention to the various significant American writers, including Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and Scott Fitzgerald, who have praised Huckleberry Finn very highly.  Hemingway accorded it seminal influence: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.' If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." -- from Ernest Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa (1934)

The first member of the group to offer an opinion after this introduction swooped like a vulture to a fresh kill.  He had found it a huge struggle to get through Huckleberry Finn and thought the storyline was ‘silly’.  Having got this off his chest, he folded his wings and stuck out his beak defiantly.

Another reader timorously proposed the opinion that the books were so different that they could have been written by different authors.

Someone said how much they had enjoyed the descriptive writing about the river and natural events such as thunderstorms.  He also opined that the river in this book had no real symbolic significance, and no-one challenged this.  (Another member of the group suggested that interesting comparisons might be made with other books about river journeys, such as Heart of Darkness).

  He commented further that It was a picaresque novel, but whereas most picaresque heroes end up by returning home – perhaps wiser than they set out – in the case of Huck he has no real home, and intends to set out into ‘Injun’ territory at the end of the story.  To some degree, the arrival of Tom Sawyer in the latter part of the story represents ‘coming home’ for Huck.

There was a consensus that Huck’s characterization was convincing and sympathetic.  It was pointed out that although he reveals a good heart he does not have the independence of thought to challenge the moral foundation of slavery, or the concept that ‘niggers’ are subhuman.  In this respect however Huck’s attitude is simply typical of the time, and in no way extreme. 

It was pointed out too that Huck himself stood in the position of slave to his father, and that a judge confirmed that he was the property of his father, irrespective of his welfare.  Like Jim, Huck is imprisoned in a cabin, but his escape is masterfully pragmatic, unlike the elaborate nonsense invented later by Tom Sawyer to free Jim.  Tom is in fact a character who doesn’t live in the real world, whereas Huck is very down-to-earth and lives in the moment.  Huck however doesn’t question the superiority assumed by Tom, or query the absurdity of his ideas.

There was general agreement that the last part of Huckleberry Finn greatly overplayed the joke of the elaborate fantasy woven by Tom, and became merely tiresome.  Like Hemingway, most thought that the novel should have ended earlier.   It was noted that there was a three year hiatus in Mark Twain”s writing process, before the ending was written, and we wondered about whether an effective editor would have let the latter part of the novel pass unchallenged.

The preponderance of dialogue in Huckleberry Finn was noted, and its apparent authenticity admired.  It was remarked that the authorial voice in the two books was different: in Tom Sawyer it is Mark Twain who addresses us, in Huckleberry Finn it is Huck.

We kept returning to the characterization of Huck.  His story doesn’t come to a conclusion.  He refers repeatedly to a wish to die, and to his lonesomeness.  He has low self-esteem.  He has no home, he is just running away, and at the end he is still running.  The world outside him keeps encroaching (for example in the persons of the duke and the king, or the attempts of Widow Douglas and Miss Watson to ‘civilize’ him).  And yet he embodies the qualities of boldness, adaptability and quick-wittedness that make up the archetypal ‘frontier spirit’.

We didn’t spend as long on the character of Tom Sawyer.  Essentially a fantasist, the main quality he shares with Huck is that they are both prodigiously accomplished liars.

The violence of Huckleberry Finn was remarked upon, and it was suggested that it provided some historical context for the casual violence and addiction to guns that characterize some elements of society in the USA today.

Another reader admired how both books provided a compendium of contemporary superstitions and ritual behaviours.  (As an example, Huck Finn: “I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do.”)  Both the ‘nigger’ Jim and the boys are full of these beliefs, and it was suggested that for these uneducated characters this network of superstitions filled the place that religion held for some of the white adult characters.

A member of the group interested in the visual arts proposed that Tom Sawyer was like representational art, and Huckleberry Finn was like abstract art– playing with ideas and language rather than too concerned with plot and structure.  There was a general feeling that from a structural point of view, Tom Sawyer was the more satisfying achievement, yet Huckleberry Finn was the more ambitious and stimulating work.

What then of the initial assertion that ‘Tom Sawyer is great fun, Huckleberry Finn is great literature’?

Well, there was more or less unanimity of agreement on the first point, but a degree of dissension on the second. It was felt that Huckleberry Finn had historical importance in its influence on American literature, and was in many respects a very fine piece of writing, but that it lacked the sophistication of the best European novels of the period.  Of course the phrase ‘great literature’ has no precise definition, so this comparison should not be taken as excluding Mark Twain from any pantheon of great writers.

Our conversation began now to wander like the great Mississippi itself around various mudbanks and shoals.  We observed that many aphorisms were attributed to Mark Twain; that his autobiography and other writings showed him in general an astute commentator on American life; that he was lionized in his lifetime and received various honorary degrees.

The games in Tom Sawyer reminded us of our own childhood activities – spud guns, swapping cigarette cards, marbles.

We speculated about colloquial expressions related to the books – being an ‘Aunt Sally’, or being ‘sold down the river’.

We talked about modern versions of slavery, and the rights and wrongs of buying cheap clothing in western countries that might have been produced using child labour or near-slave labour.

We discovered from the vulture, who turned out to have read on the sly Mark Twain’s autobiography, that Twain at first wrote right-handed, and then because of rheumatism, changed to left-handed and finally to dictation.

This led to conjecture about the intellectual and creative significance of left-handedness, and a straw poll in the group that revealed that two out of the nine people present were left-handed, approximately in line with the average for the population at large.

It now dawned on us that we were following a deceptive tributary of our chosen river, or, to use a popular colloquialism, we were up a certain creek without a paddle.  So we closed our dusty school-prize tomes, switched off our i-pads and kindles, and slunk off into the night.