A Debt of Gratitude

Even though Graham Greene lived and worked well into the ending of the 20^th century, I was a little surprised when I saw the date of publication of ‘The Human Factor’: 1978, the year I graduated from university: For some reason I had associated it with the 1950s and an earlier generation.

As I’ve mentioned before, Greene had had an early influence on me - but reading Greene from this end of my allotted time is a very different experience. The realisation that he is dealing in my lifetime gives a sharpness, if not bitterness, and reflecting on Greene’s observations is a more personal undertaking than initially presumed. Time present is to be found in time past.

This is a spy story – in the way that King Lear is a story about retirement or Waiting for Godot a play about a missed appointment. The title is appropriate – if 007 is all action, and Smiley not really much deeper than your average detective, Castle, the central character here, and Davis, his co-worker in the Security Service are not only fleshed out and rounded physically, but psychologically believable. The guilts and gratitudes, the anxieties and loves Mr Greene weaves into their tale are not mere excuses for action, they are the subject of the story – The Human Factor.

Through a debt of honour Castle feels bound to reveal what amount to trivial secrets to the ideological enemies of his nation – enemies who acted with more humanity and goodwill than supposed allies and friends. No guilt arises from the treachery, if anything it is a re-affirmation of the love he feels for his wife (the root cause of the debt) and a genuine attempt to relieve the suffering of her ‘people’ under the vicious Apartheid system both the British and American governments are working with covertly (and not so covertly) in an attempt to stop the threat of Africa turning ‘red’.

What we get is the clash of an individual with systems – the resulting crushing of the human by the state and its apparatus is quite desolating. The world has turned upside down – the doctor seeks ways to kill, the policeman attempts to justify and excuse crime; the Catholic church is anything but catholic and even the guard dog fawns on strangers.

Accidents happen in this ‘we’re not totalitarian’ state – the wrong man is executed (how else can we prevent bad publicity) – much as in the ‘regrettable’ accident of the killing of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes.

Fictional though Mr Greene’s world is, it is a fiction based on a mental reality – that of a security service more frightened of the enemy within than a real threat without: I can only compare it to the human immune system turning against the cells of its own body.

Relevant to all of us in the present climate of ‘wars’ against terror which produce far more shocking tortures and crimes against humanity on behalf of the good guys than the bad guys could dream up (or afford).

A Nation's Frailty

The Uncommon Reader

Fortunately, Alan Bennett has already declined a knighthood - meeting England's sword wielding Queen after publishing The Uncommon Reader might be a little, shall we say, 'ambiquous'.

But then again, Alan Bennett has a charm and humour which might, if the present monarch does actually read, disarm even the most, "We are not amused!"

The story is simple; England's Queen suddenly develops a passion for reading which humanises her. It does not, however, result in any final satisfaction and at the end of the book we are left with a twist that seems to be setting Mrs Windsor off on a whole new adventure.

In such stark outline it is a piece of amusing trivia ... and I've read several reviews which don't seem to have moved beyond this level of comprehension: That is to greatly underestimate both Mr Bennett and his understanding of the character of the British Monarchy. It is also to reduce what is an interesting essay into the relationship between reader and writer to mere amusement.

Bennett is superb with 'odd' characters - his Talking Heads series takes individuals and exposes both the bleakness and the richness of their humanity.

He does a similar job here on 'The Queen'. But to mistake the character for the real thing is to mistake Mr Bennett's purpose ...

The Queen of England (Elizabeth II - she doesn't even have a real family name!) represents in a way which is unique in the modern world, a nation. That nation is not even England ... it is the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or UK. The poor woman has even got the extra burden of several other states and nations tucked around her.

As such, any individuality or personality has been subsumed under the mantel of duty ...and that is Mr Bennett's starting point. Through her passion for reading, the character of the Queen undergoes an education which releases her individuality and causes her to reject that lifetime of duty.

This is, of course, a manifesto and a metaphor ... if the Queen is representative of the UK then it is as duty bound as she and there is a need for the liberating effect of reading.

But it goes beyond being a simple cry for more education, it is a call for the appreciation of the creative in us all.

As the Queen, tentatively at first, makes her way through the world of literature she absorbs everything from high to low. It causes her to ask embarrassing questions about Jean Genet of the French President; to force old paperback copies of Hardy's poetry on the Prime Minister; to eventually send her private secretary back home to the bleakness of the southern hemisphere.

The early journey is supported by the dish-washing homosexual 'Norman' - too ugly to make it as page. His promotion upstairs leads to resentment and his eventual removal whilst the Queen is away both fortunate and unfortunate.

Prince Philip trots around like one of 'the dogs' and several un-named grandchildren flit in and out. So too do a remarkable list of authors, all given a little pungent assessment - which is one of the delights of the book.

Politicians are given short shrift ... but not the main character herself. There is an affection in the writing which belies the suggestion that Mr Bennett is taking a swipe at the monarchy. He's too good a writer for that.

Oh, by the way - it is very, very witty!

Technorati Tags: Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader, Elizabeth II, UK

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Damned Silly!

“One is tempted to say,” said the white wine and soda, “it was a positive wolf in the grass slothing lambs wool mittens!”

The tea with milk, no sugar, agreed.

With a clear and unambiguous title, Blandings Castle emblazoned on the dust cover, one is not expecting trips to Hollywood, even with the inestimable Mr. Mulliner and his ubiquitous family.

Sneakily slipped inside is the full title, ‘Blandings Castle and Elsewhere’. Damned cheek I’d call it – especially as I’d settled in to my summer holiday read and, like England, was expecting …

In two clear parts with and entr'acte of mixed pedigree, this collection of short stories takes you through an early phase of Lord Emsworth’s passions (strictly horticultural at first but moving swinewards), deals with the suicidal American publisher and comes to rest in the US of A’s bitter world of celluloid sweat-shop.

Emsworth here seems to be a bit stronger - to be able to offer resistance to that most formidable of avenging hosts, his sister and even takes to refusing his Glaswegian sourpuss Head Gardener – but only with the helping hand of a London waif.

These are tales which wag with all the drunken puppy-dog vigour you would expect from Blandings and don’t disappoint. The young characters are chumps, the older characters either fighting against the encroaching idiocies of youth, or rich enough to indulge them. Sailing through it all is Emsworth, concerned only with the important things of life – watching his marrow grow or fattening his pig to Shropshire Show prize winning proportions. His son is more concerned with selling dog biscuits.

This ends all too quickly – at page 160 of a 300 page book.

Mr Potter, publisher, gets dragged down to a very Blandings-inferior country residence for the between acts entertainment marking a sort of obvious transition – an American in England before we hit the English in America. What he is doing sneaking out of a punt and into the moat I’ll leave it to you to find out – but star (or rather Lady Wickham’s celebrated willpower) crossed love is involved, and furniture piled against the door.

Mr Mulliner then, as is his want, engages in a bit of storytelling in the local pub to assembled drinks. All are of related Mulliners, their blighted loves and interactions in the jungle we know as the film industry.

Mr. Wodehouse seems to have a wormwood like inflection towards the Californian dream factory and one wonders if personal experience hasn’t coloured his attitude.

Monstrous moguls, scheming starlets and writing prisons all feature in this most deceptive of environments – and the bland drift of English youth towards it is reminiscent of Pacific flotsam.

Amusing but cautionary, the moral high ground is scaled, whilst in the cellar the police are locked out of the illicit liquor store.

Good tales – but not what I wanted on the hot summer riverbank as I lazily watch the local hookers attempting to land the indolent carp.

Technorati Tags: P G Wodehouse, Blandings Castle, Lord Emsworth, Everyman

Greedy Appetites

Crime Fiction tends to rely on the glutton rather than the epicure – the criminals always seem to want insatiably - wealth, power, wo/men; the detectives want more and more, almost with a ferociousness, the next clue; and the readers stuff themselves to bursting with the newest publication. Tabloid details are piled high on the table and quickly consumed.

Death in the Truffle Wood is, unashamedly, Crime Fiction.

It does, however, nod in the direction of better cooking in that it titillates the appetite – usually with a dark humour. And there are a couple of good descriptions of the sort of food that gives the French the moral high ground over the English when it comes to ‘measuring’ cuisines.

Commissaire Laviolette, is the detective Poirot might have been if Agatha Crusty had been a French intellectual instead of English ‘madam’: He likes good food, he smokes roll-ups with the class only the intelligent seem to manage, he chases women whilst he’s chasing murderers and he is, according to his bosses, none-descript – he’s given the case of the disappearing hippies because no one will notice him.

He, like his author, Pierre Magnan, is Provencal – The Province – the one that gives its inhabitants the necessary passport to condescend to town dwellers everywhere, and puts the urbane in urban.

Laviolette understands the countryside and country people in a way streetwise Phillip Marlowes in their brick and tarmac jungles will never grasp. There is almost an organic telepathy, an osmosis of thought and feeling flowing between the detective and the community. Clues are a concentration of flavours and scents rather than solid facts … animals play a key role in searching out these essentials – just as Roseline, the truffle hunting pig, searches and earns her keep rooting for what is essentially a parasitic fungus sucking away at the roots of healthy oak trees.

Those truffles, however, feature strongly in both the cooking and the plot – and act as a metaphor for the whole genre – what, after all, is it we are searching for but the rotten feeding off the strong? What is the detective in fiction but a glorified truffle pig?

That is the kind of rhetorical question you end up asking as you read – and points to an element in this book which is missing in the average pot-boiler – intellectualism.

Now, I am of Anglo-Saxon stock, and, even though I’ve denied my father and changed … I haven’t gone so far as to feel comfortable with ‘intellectualism’. Intelligence I can cope with – as long as it does the occasional prat-fall and keeps itself suitably coy – but showy intellectualism is a bit ‘continental’.

All I can say is, “Here it works,” – it is an integral part of the book and gives a dimension to the read which is refreshing to the jaded palate. I am not convinced though that the majority of Morse (who is only intelligent, despite his opera playing) and Barnaby (who is decidedly English Bumbling) fans will take much pleasure from the story.

Of the characters that people the pages there is a real French tart – not the English sticky, sweet, ‘Queen of Hearts’, jam type, but a goat cheese, onion and truffle baked Banon original; a small, lost dachshund befriended by the pig; several braces of warring brothers; and a lightening struck old cow who terrifies all around her and gets the toughest of toughs to open doors, politely, for her. There is also mention but, infuriatingly. no development of a partnership between the local baker and the local priest.

I picked up the book as an intentional anti-dote to the heavy English cooking of ‘On Chesil Beach’ – and have to say, instead of a sorbet, I got something a little more substantial – but equally invigorating.

Technorati Tags: Pierre Magnan, Death in Truffle Wood, Crime Fiction

A visit to the bookshop

After the emotional thumping of 'On Chesil Beach' I thought I needed something a bit lighter.

I duly wandered into a couple of the local bookshops and did a browse.
I like browsing.
I end up buying a lot online - I live, after all, in a provincial town in an none-English speaking country: The fact that there are several bookshops in the town with a range of books in English is itself something of a miracle.

Don't try ordering though - the Romanian system can't cope with ordering.

Amazon (the UK one) saves my bacon regularly, even though the postage is unreasonable, almost punitive.

I wasn't sure what I wanted - i just knew it was to be lighter - possibly a Crusty (Agatha), possibly sci-fi; maybe something foreign - as long as it wasn't too intense.

There are some good Chinese and Japanese novels - the publisher Vintage seems to be making inroads into lesser explored territories; and sci-fi is over represented - too much in fact to go through, and the girl stocktaking in front of them restricted my enthusiasm somewhat.

Then two clear choices popped up - a classic, 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores', a García Márquez. I thought that was a good choice after all that sexual frustration of the McEwan.

And 'Death in the Truffle Wood' - whose blurb promises not only good crime fiction, but loving descriptions of French food.

After the early 60's English of the last novel, the French won hands down.

So, expect some delicious crime and good pig fodder next up!

Nobel Aspirations!

There was talk, when Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’ was up for The Booker Prize, of its shortness:  The implication is of a slight story, of a lack of depth – of ‘all very well, but …’.

I take it the people talking in that way either use a pair of scales to determine the quality of literature or have senses so exhausted from reading too many words as to be unable to determine true quality when it bites them.

This is not a book for literary gluttons – it is one for the epicure.

The plot is simple – we go through the agonies of two people on their wedding night: Both are virgins; both are deeply in love; both are nervous.

A simple tale.

But this is the end of the post war generation – the moment when one culture dies and another hope-full springs on the scene.  In his poem, Anus Mirabilis, Philip Larkin made the point:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
…

and it is as if On Chesil Beach has taken this as a leitmotiv.  The book is set just before this year of wonders.

Sex, sexual relationships, the physical linking of two people is very much an element in the book – but it is not only the physical, it is a psychological and spiritual, a communal and private expression of the moment of giving up a hard-fought-for independence.

As befits such a topic, several of the descriptions are quite explicit – Ian McEwan has the luxury of writing after the, ‘end of the "Chatterley" ban’ and consequently can talk of what is a forbidden subject to the post war generation (at least in respectable circles).

Music is also a key.

Florence is a young, talented, classical musician with an inability to see anything of interest in the popular music of her day; Edward, whilst being a little more flexible, swings a different direction – he dreams of fathering a daughter who would follow her mother into the world of music, possibly as a violinist (but, you never know, maybe with an electric guitar).

Edward gets into brawls outside pubs – enjoying the violent release of energies wound like a clock spring inside; Florence keeps a tight grip on her tensions using the notes on the printed score for her release and dominating, tyrant like almost, the rehearsals of the string quartet she forms.

Both are intelligent, both have a degree of single-mindedness both have families which encapsulate the standards of their time.

Florence’s family is a mix of business and academia – father earning, mother bohemianish philosopher – she knows the right people.  Edward comes from a different end of the same class – his father is a headmaster of a primary school, his mother, well, his mother ‘looks after’ the house.  Both have sisters, both have good childhoods.

How then do we get to the tragedy on the beach - for this is a tragedy – a real tragedy, of Ancient Greek proportions – how do we get beyond the point of no return?

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the hubris of mankind – we fail to make the right sacrifices letting the gods, ‘kill us for their sport’.  One word can make a difference, and we won’t speak that word through pride, or duty, or fear, or, - for whatever reason.

Another part is the downright stupidity of innocence … if there was ever an argument needed for sex education in schools – this is it!  But that is to reduce what is a sublime story to the ridiculous (although I do think Mr Mc knew his was a tightrope walk between tragedy and comedy).

Sublime too is the writing – there are descriptions here to relish: The cold coagulated early 60’s food; the cheap ‘French’ wine; the material of the dresses; the tackiness of bodily fluids.  Part of the intenseness of the story comes from this exceptionally careful use of appropriate description – you are firmly placed in a material world.

Not that this really happened – IM makes very clear on the last page of the book, “the characters in this novel are inventions.”  The need for this reminder is not just a legalistic, ‘someone might sue’, but a reflection of the success and believability of the story – as I read I thought of my older sisters (of this generation) and their wedding nights. I remembered the meals (and could name the wine).

The frightening verisimilitude gives added power to what I believe is a tale of essential humanity – there, but for …

(I also think this is the book the Nobel Prize committee will turn too one day and say – Universal Literature).

Technorati Tags: Book Review, Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach, Literature

Demon Fowl

Keep it simple, keep it fast and keep it jokey: Perfect entertainment for the mid-teens (and older).

I’ve enjoyed all the Artimis Fowl novels to date – and this latest, Artimis Fowl and the Lost Colony, is no exception.

For those not in the know, Artemis is a teenage genius with a penchant for crime, and a big – very BIG – minder called Butler. He’s been annoying the hell out of the fairy kingdom for years, although, having saved each other from disaster more than once, they have the sort of a love-hate relationship neither side would admit to: Holly, ex-LEPrecon (the fairy police), is his principle contact and Foley (the centaur) the technical wizardry supplier – oh, and there is a singularly repulsive character called Mulch, the perfect manifestation of all younger teenage toilet humour jokes – what comes out of his backside on a regular basis shall not soil these pages, even though it might fertilize the ground (and pollute the air).

In this episode Artemis starts off demon hunting in Barcelona – and catches more than he bargains for.

For starters there is an initially slightly younger female genius just as arrogant, just as rich and just as infuriating as he is himself: And with the surging of adolescent juices, Artemis is getting a little emotional: Not his sort of thing at all – he even has to ask Butler for advice! She’s too busy working on a paper for her first Nobel prize to take much notice.

Then there are the demons – whose own adolescent juices make the trials of the average human no more taxing than squeezing the odd blackhead. One of the demons seems to have a problem of delayed adolescence – but that turns out to be a good thing for all demon kind, although somewhat embarrassing for the poor individual concerned.

The final element is a suitably manic maniac, Kong – the human equivalent of a Polar bear amongst the seals. He had the misfortunes to have had a creative older brother whose embroidered ‘boggy-man’ stories result in a series of very unfortunate events at the top of a very high skyscraper and an exhibition of very accurately detailed stone carving from the Celtic fringes.

Nothing to worry about though – even though Artemis lets Holly die and fails totally at one point, trapping himself forever on the other side – all ends happy ‘til the next episode, in the end.

Great read (parents - steal it off the kids and sneak it under the bedcovers).

Technorati Tags: Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl, Children's Books, Fantasy, Humour