Category Archives: Literature

Literature

Ursula K Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

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As a teenag­er I was intrigued by the prodi­gious out­put of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers that you could find lin­ing the shelves at WH Smiths — Isaac Asi­mov, Michael Moor­cock, Robert A Hein­lein, Frank Her­bert and so on — often with appeal­ing, oth­er-world­ly art­work on their cov­ers. Along­side sci-fi you also had the relat­ed genre of sci­ence-fan­ta­sy, or straight-up “fan­ta­sy”, which dif­fers from sci-fi in the fact that, whilst the lat­ter remains tech­ni­cal­ly in a world of sci­en­tif­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty, sci­ence fan­ta­sy allows for vio­la­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic laws of the real world, thus encom­pass­ing all the “sword and sor­cery” fic­tion from Tolkien to Robert E Howard’s Conan The Bar­bar­ian nov­els.

Thanks to Tolkien (I first read The Lord of the Rings some­where in my mid-teens), it was sci­ence fan­ta­sy to which I leaned, if I had to choose, but even then I wasn’t what you’d call a real fan of the genre. I was too eclec­tic, I sup­pose, busy col­lect­ing thrillers by the likes of Alis­tair Maclean or Jack Hig­gins, or hor­ror fic­tion by James Her­bert, or grit­ty pulp like Richard Stark’s Park­er nov­els or Don Pendleton’s The Exe­cu­tion­er series – more killing bad guys than slay­ing drag­ons, shall we say?

How­ev­er, anoth­er name I recall see­ing on those book shelves (but which nev­er read until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly) was that of Ursu­la K Le Guin (1929–2018), an Amer­i­can author known for both sci­ence fic­tion works set in her “Hain­ish” uni­verse, and sci­ence fan­ta­sy in her extra­or­di­nary Earth­sea series. It was the lat­ter I dis­cov­ered a few years ago when I pur­chased her Earth­sea Quar­tet on a whim and found myself amazed and thrilled by her sto­ry-telling. There is noth­ing throw­away about Le Guin’s nov­els, no pro­duc­tion-line fan­ta­sy, these; they are lit­er­ary works that weave an extra­or­di­nary world which has obvi­ous­ly been tak­en seri­ous­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly thought through.

The Earth­sea world is one of sea and islands, a vast arch­i­pel­ago metic­u­lous­ly mapped out at the begin­ning of the book, in which its inhab­i­tants under­stand that mag­ic is a real thing, an in-built tal­ent com­mon to all though high­ly-devel­oped only in some, par­tic­u­lar­ly those trained at the school at Roke (Earthsea’s school of wiz­ardry cre­at­ed long before Hog­warts). There are “weath­er work­ers” and “fix­ers”, and var­i­ous low-lev­el mag­i­cal specialities…and then there are the cream of the crop, the card-car­ry­ing wiz­ards, like the pro­tag­o­nist Ged (also known as Spar­rowhawk), who go by the title of “Mage”.

In the first book, A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea, the young Ged, on the island of Gont, over­hears his mater­nal aunt, the vil­lage witch, using “words of pow­er” to attract goats. He tries it him­self, to sur­pris­ing effect, and his aunt recog­nis­es Ged’s excep­tion­al­ism. By the age of twelve he has learned every­thing his aunt can teach him, and so the jour­ney begins. I love the nuanced mag­ic: instead of those dra­mat­ic elec­tric-bolt bat­tles between Gan­dalf and Saru­man, or Har­ry Pot­ter and Volde­mort, we see Ged using a “mage wind” to pow­er a boat for­ward when the wind fails. It’s alto­geth­er a more sub­tle kind of mag­ic. A more believ­able kind, in fact, even if it is just “fan­ta­sy”.

The Earth­sea Quar­tet book cov­er
Ursu­la K Le Guin
Literature

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843)

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Charles Dick­ens is wide­ly regard­ed as the great­est writer of the Vic­to­ri­an era, and he cer­tain­ly came up with some endur­ing fic­tion­al char­ac­ters. As an aside, I recall the menu at the Out­side Inn bistro in my home town as being a rich source of these: I used to get the Bill Sykes burg­er (smoth­ered in chilli) but there was also a Mr Micaw­ber, a Tiny Tim (served with sal­ad rather than chips), a Tre­ble Bum­ble and so on. Every­one has seen the 1974 film ver­sion of Oliv­er Twist on numer­ous occa­sions of course, but it’s remark­able just how often Dick­ens’ nov­els have been made into films; David Cop­per­field, for exam­ple, has been filmed eight times (in 1911, 1913, 1922, 1935, 1969, 1993, 1999 and 2000). Sim­i­lar­ly, there are six film ver­sions each of Great Expec­ta­tions, The Old Curios­i­ty Shop and A Tale of Two Cities.

When it comes to A Christ­mas Car­ol, how­ev­er, its endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty hits the stratos­phere: there are no less than thir­teen ‘straight’ film ver­sions (as in, named A Christ­mas Car­ol), as well as six or sev­en more fea­tur­ing the name ‘Scrooge’ in some form or anoth­er, and numer­ous spin-off and par­o­dy ver­sions from the Smurfs to the Mup­pets (the lat­ter is sur­pris­ing­ly excel­lent, inci­den­tal­ly). It is there­fore high­ly unlike­ly that you will need the fol­low­ing syn­op­sis; nonethe­less, for the sake of new­ly-arrived extra-ter­res­tri­al read­ers of this blog:  A Christ­mas Car­ol recounts the sto­ry of Ebenez­er Scrooge, an elder­ly miser who is vis­it­ed by the ghost of his for­mer busi­ness part­ner Jacob Mar­ley and the spir­its of Christ­mas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their vis­its, Scrooge is trans­formed into a kinder, gen­tler man.

Dick­ens wrote A Christ­mas Car­ol dur­ing a peri­od when the coun­try was explor­ing and re-eval­u­at­ing its past Christ­mas tra­di­tions, includ­ing car­ols and new­er cus­toms such as Christ­mas trees. He was influ­enced by the expe­ri­ences of his own youth and by oth­er writ­ers includ­ing Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing and Dou­glas Jer­rold. He was par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired by a vis­it to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of sev­er­al estab­lish­ments for Lon­don’s street chil­dren. The treat­ment of the poor and the abil­i­ty of a self­ish man to redeem him­self by trans­form­ing into a more sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter are of course the key themes of the sto­ry.

Pub­lished on 19 Decem­ber 1843, the first edi­tion sold out by Christ­mas Eve, and it has nev­er been out of print since. Dick­ens even began per­form­ing pub­lic recita­tions of the sto­ry at var­i­ous venues through­out Lon­don, which proved to be a big hit with the pub­lic. The novel­la thus cap­tured the zeit­geist of the mid-Vic­to­ri­an revival of the Christ­mas hol­i­day and helped cre­ate the arche­types that were hand­ed down to lat­er gen­er­a­tions, like fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, sea­son­al food and drink, danc­ing, games and a fes­tive gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it.

Here is a nice mon­tage from the 1951 film, Scrooge, fea­tur­ing Alis­tair Sim (mak­ing a sec­ond appear­ance in this blog; see An Inspec­tor Calls) as Ebenez­er Scrooge. Rather than the cur­mud­geon, let’s see the redeemed Scrooge as the Christ­mas spir­it final­ly takes hold with­in him. Sim cap­tures the pathos mas­ter­ful­ly: pre­pare for a warm feel­ing!

To all my read­ers, Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Charles Dick­ens
 
Literature

Franz Kafka’s The Castle (1924)

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You know a writer has made their mark when their name ends up becom­ing used as an adjec­tive: Dick­en­sian and Orwellian spring to mind of course, but we also occa­sion­al­ly see Sha­vian to describe George Bernard Shaw’s didac­tic com­mit­ment to social pur­pose, Well­sian to describe a futur­ism rem­i­nis­cent of H G Wells, or Tolkienesque for any­thing with elves or wiz­ards in it. My favourite is Kafkaesque, which describes a night­mar­ish bureau­crat­ic dystopia, a famil­iar theme to any­one who has tried to sort out a non-stan­dard trans­ac­tion with Pay­Pal.

Franz Kaf­ka (1883–1924) was born into a Ger­man-Jew­ish fam­i­ly in Prague and is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the major fig­ures of 20th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. His work typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures char­ac­ters fac­ing sur­re­al­is­tic predica­ments and face­less bureau­crat­ic pow­ers, and thus Kaf­ka explores themes of alien­ation and exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety. Few of his works were pub­lished in his life­time, and all his best-known works such as Die Ver­wand­lung (The Meta­mor­pho­sis), Der Process (The Tri­al), and Das Schloss (The Cas­tle) were pub­lished posthu­mous­ly. In fact, Kaf­ka had instruct­ed in his will that these unpub­lished works be destroyed but, for­tu­nate­ly for pos­ter­i­ty, his friend and execu­tor Max Brod ignored his wish­es.

I read The Cas­tle as a young man trav­el­ling the world and spend­ing lots of time in con­sulates procur­ing visas, and I remem­ber being hooked. For­tu­nate­ly, although I spent many an hour in con­sular wait­ing areas, my own expe­ri­ence of bureau­cra­cy nev­er matched that of “K.”, the unfor­tu­nate pro­tag­o­nist who arrives in a vil­lage and strug­gles to make head­way with the shady author­i­ties who gov­ern from the cas­tle on the hill.

K. spends much of the nov­el try­ing to secure a meet­ing with Klamm, the elu­sive offi­cial who might – just might – be able to stamp the nec­es­sary forms and obtain for K. his hoped-for res­i­den­cy in the vil­lage. Sad­ly, K. is frus­trat­ed at every turn, not least by Klamm’s gate­keep­ing sec­re­tary, Momus.

The nov­el was unfin­ished at the time of Kafka’s death from tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1924, though Kaf­ka appar­ent­ly told Max Brod that K. would con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the cas­tle author­i­ties until his death: they would noti­fy him on his deathbed that his “legal claim to live in the vil­lage was not valid, yet, tak­ing cer­tain aux­il­iary cir­cum­stances into account, he was per­mit­ted to live and work there”. A suit­ably iron­ic con­clu­sion.

 
Franz Kaf­ka
Literature

J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (1945)

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A whole new gen­er­a­tion of kids study­ing GCSE Eng­lish are dis­cov­er­ing J B Priestley’s 1945 play, An Inspec­tor Calls. It seems to be every­where at the moment: as well as being on the syl­labus in schools, the Nation­al Theatre’s pro­duc­tion of the play was doing the rounds again nation­al­ly when the lock­down hit. Sad­ly, I just missed out on that, hav­ing seen the poster too late, but I did find a DVD of the 1954 film for a quid in a char­i­ty shop, and snapped it up.

You may well be famil­iar with the sto­ry: set in 1912 in a well-to-do north­ern Mid­lands house­hold, in a soci­ety divid­ed by class dis­tinc­tion, we find the Bir­ling fam­i­ly assem­bled in cel­e­bra­tion of their daugh­ter Sheila’s engage­ment to Ger­ald Croft. The patri­arch, Arthur Bir­ling, is feel­ing pleased with him­self, as his busi­ness is doing well and he is on an upward social tra­jec­to­ry, improved even more by the social stand­ing of the Croft fam­i­ly into which Sheila is mar­ry­ing. Their evening, how­ev­er, is inter­rupt­ed by the arrival of Inspec­tor Goole (“Poole” in the film ver­sion).

The Inspec­tor, played mas­ter­ful­ly by Alis­tair Sim in the 1954 film, has some ques­tions for all the mem­bers of the fam­i­ly and Ger­ald Croft, in turn, con­cern­ing a girl who has just com­mit­ted sui­cide in the gris­ly man­ner of drink­ing bleach, a sign of her des­per­ate men­tal state. It becomes appar­ent that each per­son has had some involve­ment with this poor girl, albeit in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, and each has played some part in her descent and degra­da­tion. The unfold­ing of the sto­ry­line is sub­tle and we the audi­ence are grad­u­al­ly drawn in as details are revealed and it dawns on us that every­one present has some con­nec­tion.

Telling­ly, the char­ac­ters react dif­fer­ent­ly to Inspec­tor Goole’s rev­e­la­tions. The old­er ones refuse to accept their respon­si­bil­i­ty; the younger ones — Sheila in par­tic­u­lar — approach an epiphany. Priest­ley lays bare the self-impor­tance of the old­er gen­er­a­tion of the Bir­lings with­out flinch­ing. It is a bril­liant decon­struc­tion of the human con­di­tion.

Here is Alis­tair Sim (bet­ter known per­haps for his cross-dress­ing com­e­dy per­for­mances in the St Trini­an’s movies) in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly com­pelling scene from the film.

J B Priest­ley
Literature

Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children (1906)

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In com­mon with many, I first dis­cov­ered Edith Nesbit’s The Rail­way Chil­dren via the pop­u­lar film ver­sion made in 1970 and broad­cast on TV on and off ever since. I can con­jure up many mov­ing images from that movie that remind me of the sev­en­ties: the two heav­i­ly-pet­ti­coat­ed girls and their short-trousered broth­er bound­ing down hills, flag­ging down trains with red, home­made flags ; the good-heart­ed and proud sta­tion mas­ter played by Bernard Crib­bins; the emo­tion­al reunion of Bob­bie with her father on a steam-cov­ered plat­form. The book ver­sion I didn’t read until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, read­ing it out loud to my daugh­ter over the course of sev­er­al evenings – and we both loved it.

You prob­a­bly know the sto­ry: it revolves around a fam­i­ly who move from Lon­don up to rur­al York­shire into a house near the rail­way sta­tion, after the father, who works at the For­eign Office, is impris­oned after being false­ly accused of spy­ing. The chil­dren befriend a chap they call the Old Gen­tle­man who reg­u­lar­ly takes the 9:15 train near their home; he is even­tu­al­ly able to help prove their father’s inno­cence, and the fam­i­ly is reunit­ed. The fam­i­ly also takes care of a Russ­ian exile, Mr Szczepan­sky, who came to Eng­land look­ing for his fam­i­ly and Jim, the grand­son of the Old Gen­tle­man, who suf­fers a bro­ken leg in a tun­nel.

The book was first seri­alised in The Lon­don Mag­a­zine dur­ing 1905 and then pub­lished in book form in the fol­low­ing year. It’s inter­est­ing to pick up on pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions from news that was cur­rent at the time. The theme of an inno­cent man being false­ly impris­oned for espi­onage, but final­ly vin­di­cat­ed, may well have been influ­enced by the Drey­fus Affair, which had been a promi­nent news item a few years before the book was writ­ten. Nes­bit will have aligned her­self, no doubt, with Émile Zola’s famous open let­ter in sup­port of the wrong­ly-accused Alfred Drey­fus, J’Ac­cuse.

Nesbit’s own involve­ment in pol­i­tics also pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion. Nes­bit was a polit­i­cal activist and co-founder of the Fabi­an Soci­ety in 1894 (she even named her son Fabi­an). She was friends with two real-life Russ­ian dis­si­dents, Sergius Step­ni­ak and Peter Kropotkin, an amal­ga­ma­tion of whom Nes­bit prob­a­bly had in mind for her Mr Szczepan­sky.

We also see ref­er­ences to the then-cur­rent Rus­so-Japan­ese War, in which Japan suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed Tsar Nicholas II from tight­en­ing his grip on Manchuria and Korea, and Nes­bit has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­tly express her hos­tile opin­ions of Tsarist Rus­sia. I’m not sure if Nesbit’s oth­er books (she pub­lished around 60 books of children’s lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing the Psam­mead series and the Bastable series) sim­i­lar­ly reveal sub­tle polit­i­cal threads with­in them but you wouldn’t be sur­prised now, would you?

Here’s the clip from the film where Bob­bie (Jen­ny Agut­ter) spies her return­ing father amidst the steam on the plat­form and runs to him cry­ing “Dad­dy, my Dad­dy”. I well up every time.

Edith Nes­bit
Literature

Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (1925)

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One of life’s great plea­sures is read­ing to your chil­dren at bed­time, and your blog­ger, accord­ing­ly, has read many a children’s sto­ry to his own girls (and pro­vid­ed, inci­den­tal­ly, many an amus­ing voice to bring char­ac­ters to life and make the sto­ry more inter­est­ing – I didn’t live through years of Jack­anory for noth­ing, you know!). Some of the books we read were con­tem­po­rary, and some were hardy peren­ni­als from bygone eras enjoyed by pre­ced­ing gen­er­a­tions. One of the lat­ter, from near­ly a hun­dred years ago now, and which stands out as a paragon of charm is Joyce Lankester Bris­ley’s 1920s col­lec­tions of sto­ries about Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy, the lit­tle girl in the nice white cot­tage with the thatched roof.

To this day, from time to time in our house, we return to Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy and read one of her sto­ries, each one a minia­ture mas­ter­piece and the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of com­fort food. Now, it is pret­ty obvi­ous that these sto­ries are not “rel­e­vant” to today, and they are vul­ner­a­ble to claims of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and a rose-tint­ed depic­tion of a sim­ple and long-gone world. But such objec­tions don’t mat­ter a jot to a child to whom the sto­ry is being read; nor to me, the nar­ra­tor, frankly. Chil­dren don’t need “rel­e­vance”; they need to be transported…and Joyce Lankester Brisley’s world cer­tain­ly does that.

We are invit­ed into a world of rur­al charm, in an unnamed vil­lage with a school, a blacksmith’s, a grocer’s, and a baker’s, along with copi­ous fields used as short­cuts by Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy, Lit­tle Friend Susan, Bil­ly Blunt, and Toby the dog, as they walk to and from school or run errands for Moth­er. Each sto­ry begins with “Once upon a time”, and is fol­lowed by reas­sur­ing­ly unspec­tac­u­lar goings-on in Milly-Molly-Mandy’s life, be it run­ning to the shops with a six­pence for a skein of wool for Grand­ma, feed­ing milk to a baby hedge­hog, or hav­ing a pic­nic in a hol­lowed-out tree trunk with her friends.

The mag­ic lies in the way Joyce Lankester Bris­ley weaves her sim­ple sto­ries, the words and phras­es she uses, and the charm­ing illus­tra­tions, drawn by the author her­self, that accom­pa­ny the nar­ra­tive. Such sim­ple child­hood pas­times as “mend­ing” a pud­dle by adding peb­bles and stones into it, or get­ting wet and flap­ping and quack­ing like ducks: who does­n’t relate to that?

So to those to whom Milly-Molly-Mandy’s world is still cul­tur­al­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble, be warned: these sto­ries can give you a lump in your throat, as you mourn a dis­ap­peared world trod­den under­foot by the piti­less forces of mod­ernism and glob­al­ism! Nev­er­the­less, the sto­ries are an absolute delight and solid­ly deserve their place in the pan­theon of child­hood lit­er­a­ture.

Literature

Cecil Day-Lewis’s The Otterbury Incident (1948)

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When my wife and I first met and struck out on that long process of get­ting to know one anoth­er, one of the ques­tions that came up at some point was: what was your favourite children’s book? Amaz­ing­ly, we chose the same one — The Otter­bury Inci­dent by C Day Lewis — and this coin­ci­dence was com­pound­ed by the fact that nei­ther of us knew any­one else who had even heard of this book, nev­er mind read it or cher­ished it as their favourite.

In my case, the book, I believe, was on a book­shelf at pri­ma­ry school and I guess I must have bor­rowed it, or per­haps it was read by the whole class (the great span of time that has elapsed since then has, alas, greyed out the specifics…though look­ing it up, I see that it was in fact on the UK Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion read­ing list for 1972!). In any event, I came to own it, as did  my wife, and to this day both copies sit along­side each oth­er on one of our daugh­ters’ own book­shelf. So what was it that cap­tured our imag­i­na­tions?

Writ­ten in 1948, it is a sto­ry set in the fic­tion­al small provin­cial town of Otter­bury, short­ly after the Sec­ond World War. Although the town had been large­ly untouched by the war, it had sus­tained an acci­den­tal hit from a Ger­man bomb leav­ing a bomb-site (known as the “Inci­dent”) which is used for war-games by two rival gangs of boys (Ted’s Com­pa­ny and Toppy’s Com­pa­ny) from the local school. A plot involv­ing some stolen mon­ey draws the boys into con­flict with local spiv John­ny Sharp and his sleazy accom­plice “the Wart”, and a series of events lead the boys on a mis­sion to uncov­er ille­gal goings-on in the town. An excit­ing denoue­ment involves a raid on dodgy local busi­ness­man Skinner’s yard (with the rival gangs now col­lab­o­rat­ing against the com­mon ene­my) and his ille­gal activ­i­ties are bust­ed wide open, with every­thing pret­ty much wrapped up just as the police arrive.

Cecil Day-Lewis (father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis) was pri­mar­i­ly a poet (and indeed was Poet Lau­re­ate from 1968 until his death in 1972) but he also wrote mys­tery sto­ries under the pseu­do­nym Nicholas Blake. He only ever wrote two books for chil­dren (the oth­er is 1933’s Dick Willough­by), but The Otter­bury Inci­dent is pitched per­fect­ly for young minds, and its char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is engag­ing.

Then there are the illus­tra­tions by Edward Ardiz­zone: sim­ple, charm­ing, evoca­tive. My wife says her first con­cep­tion of what a “spiv” looked like (even before Pri­vate Walk­er from Dad’s Army, pre­sum­ably!) came from the illus­tra­tion of John­ny Sharp. We recent­ly vis­it­ed the Hep­worth in Wake­field and saw an exhi­bi­tion of lith­o­graphs from the School Prints scheme in the for­ties (an inter­est­ing sto­ry in its own right). One of the prints fea­tured some sketched fig­ures whose style jumped out as strange­ly familiar…looking up Ardizzone’s name we saw that indeed it was one and the same artist respon­si­ble for those images from our youth. So, to both writer and illus­tra­tor, we salute you!

The intro­duc­tion is a mas­ter­class in sum­mari­sa­tion: in two para­graphs the whole sto­ry and its char­ac­ters are set up per­fect­ly.

Begin at the begin­ning, go to the end, and there stop — that’s what Rick­ie, our Eng­lish mas­ter, told me when it was set­tled I should write the sto­ry. It sounds sim­ple enough. But what was the begin­ning? Haven’t you won­dered about where things start? I mean, take my sto­ry. Sup­pose I say it all began when Nick broke the class­room win­dow with his foot­ball. Well, OK, but he would­n’t have kicked the ball through the win­dow if we had­n’t just got super-heat­ed by win­ning the bat­tle against Top­py’s com­pa­ny. And that would­n’t have hap­pened if Top­py and Ted had­n’t invent­ed their war game, a month before. And I sup­pose they’d not have invent­ed their war game, with tanks and tom­my guns and ambush­es, if there had­n’t been a real war and a stray bomb had­n’t fall­en in the mid­dle of Otter­bury and made just the right sort of place — a mass of rub­ble, pipes, rafters, old junk etc — for play­ing this par­tic­u­lar game. The place is called ‘The Inci­dent’ by the way. But then you could go back fur­ther still and say there would­n’t have been a real war if Hitler had­n’t come to pow­er. And so on and so on, back into the mists of time. So where does any sto­ry begin?

I asked Rick­ie about this, and he said, ‘Jump right into the deep end of the sto­ry, don’t hang about on the edge’ — which inci­den­tal­ly was con­tra­dict­ing what he’d said first. ‘Start with the morn­ing you kids had the bat­tle and Nick broke the win­dow’ he said. When Mr Richards calls us ‘kids’, nobody objects: he’s a decent chap, as school­mas­ters go; and it’s quite true we’re young — even Ted and Top­py aren’t four­teen yet. But when John­ny Sharp and the Wart strolled past our ambush on the Inci­dent that morn­ing, and John­ny Sharp said in his sneer­ing way, ‘You kids up to your games again? Flip­ping heroes, ain’t we all?’ our blood fair­ly boiled, as you can imag­ine. We may be kids. But it was us kids who raised more than £5 for the bro­ken win­dow, and us kids who tracked down a gang of crooks and inci­den­tal­ly were thanked in pub­lic by Inspec­tor Brook. So there’s the start of my nov­el. You’ve got to have a title before you can start, I mean, and per­son­al­ly I think The Otter­bury Inci­dent is a smash­ing title.

C Day-Lewis
Literature

Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands (1903)

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Ersk­ine Childers’ nov­el, The Rid­dle of the Sands, has a rea­son­able claim to have been the first true spy nov­el. Pub­lished in 1903, it enjoyed huge pop­u­lar­i­ty in Britain in the years lead­ing up to the First World War. Tak­ing its cue from the adven­ture tales of Rid­er Hag­gard and R M Bal­lan­tyne, Childers’ nov­el con­tains less of the der­ring-do of those writ­ers but lots more real­is­tic detail and intrigue and thus more authen­tic­i­ty. This for­mu­la would be used lat­er to great effect by such espi­onage writ­ers as John Buchan and Ian Flem­ing.

When Charles Car­ruthers (it had to be “Car­ruthers”, right?) accepts an invi­ta­tion from old Oxford chum Arthur Davies, to take a yacht­ing and duck-shoot­ing trip to the Frisian Islands (the arch­i­pel­ago at the east­ern edge of the North Sea), he has no idea their hol­i­day will become a dare­dev­il inves­ti­ga­tion into a Ger­man plot to invade Britain.
The action is cen­tred around the large area of coastal water­way that is the Schleswig fiords, char­ac­terised by hun­dreds of chan­nels and inlets and ever-shift­ing sand­banks that lend them­selves to skilled nav­i­ga­tors only. They lend them­selves to secre­tive plots too, as it turns out, and when Car­ruthers and Davies stum­ble upon mys­te­ri­ous goings-on, we are drawn into a clas­sic spy adven­ture in which the Ger­man plot to invade Britain is revealed…and of course even­tu­al­ly foiled. The abil­i­ty to use boats in this envi­ron­ment is a secret weapon, and Davies, despite his eccen­tric­i­ty, is a gift­ed sailor. The minu­ti­ae of sail­ing and nav­i­ga­tion through­out the book is engross­ing.

The nov­el pre­dict­ed the threat of war with Ger­many and was so pre­scient in its iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the British coast’s defen­sive weak­ness­es that it came to influ­ence the sit­ing of new naval bases. As an aside, the sto­ry of its author is quite remark­able. Rather than fol­low­ing up the nov­el with a host of sequels as might have been expect­ed (a sort of nau­ti­cal equiv­a­lent of Big­gles per­haps?), Childers instead entered pol­i­tics. Quite bizarrely, since the nov­el is all about patri­ot­ic strug­gles for king and coun­try, its writer even­tu­al­ly became a fer­vent Irish nation­al­ist and was con­sid­ered a trai­tor by the British gov­ern­ment at the time of his death. He was exe­cut­ed by a fir­ing squad in 1922, by order of the Irish Free State.

How­ev­er, it is the nov­el that Childers will be chiefly remem­bered for, and I have select­ed as an excerpt the ini­tial let­ter from Davies to Car­ruthers invit­ing him out to the Frisian Islands. It gives us an intrigu­ing flavour of the adven­ture to come, plus an amus­ing insight into Davies’ scat­ter­gun psy­chol­o­gy. It makes me want to grab an oil­skin and a pipe and a pouch of “Raven mix­ture” and join the machi­na­tions!

 

With­ers demure­ly hand­ed me a let­ter bear­ing a Ger­man post­mark and marked ‘Urgent’. I had just fin­ished dress­ing, and was col­lect­ing my mon­ey and gloves. A momen­tary thrill of curios­i­ty broke in upon my depres­sion as I sat down to open it. A cor­ner on the reverse of the enve­lope bore the blot­ted leg­end: ‘Very sor­ry, but there’s one oth­er thing—a pair of rig­ging screws from Carey and Neil­son’s, size 1–3/8, gal­va­nized.’ Here it is:

Yacht Dul­ci­bel­la,

Flens­burg, Schleswig-Hol­stein, Sept. 21.

Dear Car­ruthers,—

I dare­say you’ll be sur­prised at hear­ing from me, as it’s ages since we met. It is more than like­ly, too, that what I’m going to sug­gest won’t suit you, for I know noth­ing of your plans, and if you’re in town at all you’re prob­a­bly just get­ting into har­ness again and can’t get away. So I mere­ly write on the off chance to ask if you would care to come out here and join me in a lit­tle yacht­ing, and, I hope, duck-shoot­ing. I know you’re keen on shoot­ing, and I sort of remem­ber that you have done some yacht­ing too, though I rather for­get about that. This part of the Baltic —the Schleswig fiords — is a splen­did cruis­ing-ground — A1 scenery — and there ought to be plen­ty of duck about soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here via Hol­land and the Frisian Islands, start­ing ear­ly in August. My pals have had to leave me, and I’m bad­ly in want of anoth­er, as I don’t want to lay up yet for a bit. I need­n’t say how glad I should be if you could come. If you can, send me a wire to the P.O. here. Flush­ing and on by Ham­burg will be your best route, I think. I’m hav­ing a few repairs done here, and will have them ready sharp by the time your train arrives. Bring your gun and a good lot of No. 4’s; and would you mind call­ing at Lan­cast­er’s and ask­ing for mine, and bring­ing it too? Bring some oil­skins. Bet­ter get the eleven-shilling sort, jack­et and trousers — not the ‘yacht­ing’ brand; and if you paint bring your gear. I know you speak Ger­man like a native, and that will be a great help. For­give this hail of direc­tions, but I’ve a sort of feel­ing that I’m in luck and that you’ll come. Any­way, I hope you and the F.O. both flour­ish. Good-bye.

Yours ever,
Arthur H. Davies.

Would you mind bring­ing me out a pris­mat­ic com­pass, and a pound of Raven mix­ture?

I pulled out the let­ter again, and ran down its impul­sive stac­ca­to sen­tences, affect­ing to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spir­its, and good fel­low­ship this flim­sy bit of paper waft­ed into the jad­ed club-room. On re-perusal, it was full of evil presage — ‘A1 scenery’ — but what of equinoc­tial storms and Octo­ber fogs? Every sane yachts­man was pay­ing off his crew now. ‘There ought to be duck’ — vague, very vague. ‘If it gets cold enough’ — cold and yacht­ing seemed to be a gra­tu­itous­ly mon­strous union. His pals had left him; why? ‘Not the “yacht­ing” brand’; and why not? As to the size, com­fort, and crew of the yacht — all cheer­ful­ly ignored; so many mad­den­ing blanks. And, by the way, why in Heav­en’s name ‘a pris­mat­ic com­pass’?

 

Literature

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961)

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I dis­cov­ered Joseph Heller’s satir­i­cal nov­el Catch-22 way back in my ear­ly twen­ties and went on to re-read it in that decade at least once, maybe twice. It is placed square­ly on that lit­er­ary pedestal known as “the great Amer­i­can nov­el” and with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, since it reg­u­lar­ly tops polls and even the BBC’s Big Read sur­vey in 2003 (the biggest sin­gle test of pub­lic read­ing taste to date) had it ranked num­ber 11 in the UK’s best-loved books. It is a dark­ly humor­ous and absur­dist satire, that exco­ri­ates the illog­i­cal nihilism of war, and it does it mas­ter­ful­ly.

I won’t attempt a plot sum­ma­ry, so let me just briefly frame the sto­ry. The nov­el fol­lows the exploits of the fic­tion­al Amer­i­can 256th fight­er squadron, sta­tioned on the island of Pianosa in Italy’s Tus­can arch­i­pel­ago, dur­ing the height of World War II. With a huge cast of char­ac­ters and a nar­ra­tive that switch­es view­points and chronol­o­gy on a reg­u­lar basis, Heller cre­ates a deli­cious mix of absur­di­ty and hilar­i­ty.

Chief lunatic in the asy­lum is Cap­tain John Yos­sar­i­an, bomber pilot, whose main ambi­tion in life is to stay alive (“live for­ev­er or die in the attempt”). Yos­sar­i­an doesn’t dis­tin­guish between the “ene­my” and his supe­ri­ors; as far as he’s con­cerned, the ene­my is any­body who’s going to get him killed, no mat­ter which side they’re on, and he con­cocts a series of inge­nious, albeit ulti­mate­ly unsuc­cess­ful, meth­ods for avoid­ing the sui­ci­dal bomb­ing mis­sions. In so doing, the Yos­sar­i­an char­ac­ter acts as the con­science of the sto­ry; his is the voice of rea­son and right­eous anger against the war and the face­less bureau­cra­cy that pulls its strings. It is that Kafkaesque bureau­cra­cy that thwarts his and oth­ers’ attempts to avoid dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, most notably with the infa­mous Catch-22.

A catch-22, of course, is a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tion from which a per­son can­not escape due to its con­tra­dic­to­ry rules. It is per­haps notable that the phrase, coined by Heller, has become part of the lex­i­con; life is indeed full of such sit­u­a­tions (“how do I gain expe­ri­ence in a job if I am always turned down for not hav­ing any expe­ri­ence?”). In the book it is used in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions to jus­ti­fy some mil­i­tary require­ment or oth­er. Inci­den­tal­ly, Heller’s orig­i­nal title was Catch-18 but for rea­sons of eupho­ny (and the release of anoth­er book, Leon Uris’s Mila 18) it was changed to Catch-22. Here’s an exam­ple of how the catch works.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which spec­i­fied that a con­cern for one’s safe­ty in the face of dan­gers that were real and imme­di­ate was the process of a ratio­nal mind. Orr was crazy and could be ground­ed. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more mis­sions. Orr would be crazy to fly more mis­sions and sane if he did­n’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and did­n’t have to; but if he did­n’t want to he was sane and had to. Yos­sar­i­an was moved very deeply by the absolute sim­plic­i­ty of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respect­ful whis­tle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Danee­ka agreed.”

Joseph Heller
Literature

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869)

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Con­sist­ing of over half a mil­lion words, spread over 1200 plus pages of small print, and involv­ing around 600 char­ac­ters (includ­ing rough­ly 160 his­tor­i­cal fig­ures), Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace enjoys almost myth­i­cal sta­tus as the arche­typ­i­cal­ly mon­u­men­tal nov­el that most peo­ple either casu­al­ly have on their list of books to tack­le one day, or who wouldn’t dream of tak­ing on. It is one of the most famous works of lit­er­a­ture in his­to­ry and gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be an absolute mas­ter­piece.

War and Peace is cer­tain­ly a chal­leng­ing read and not one to be tack­led light­ly. I came across it in a pile of sec­ond-hand books left by fel­low trav­ellers in a hotel in Peru, of all places, and realised that here was my oppor­tu­ni­ty to take it on (there must have been quite a few peo­ple over the years who have read it whilst on a gap year). Antic­i­pat­ing a slog, but not expect­ing to derive any actu­al plea­sure from it, I dived in. What a pleas­ant sur­prise! Despite some admit­ted­ly dis­tend­ed and mean­der­ing pas­sages on his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and some lengthy mil­i­tary minu­ti­ae, I found it a thrilling read. It is his­tor­i­cal nov­el, fam­i­ly chron­i­cle, and philo­soph­i­cal trea­tise, all rolled into one, cen­tred around Napoleon’s inva­sion of Rus­sia and fea­tur­ing the inter­twined lives of the Bezuhov, Bolkon­sky, Ros­tov and Kura­gin fam­i­lies.

If you want to under­stand the big pic­ture, thinks Tol­stoy, you have to exam­ine the details – which is exact­ly what he did. He stud­ied count­less man­u­scripts, let­ters, and diaries, and vis­it­ed all the sites where the bat­tles (Schön­grabern, Auster­litz, Borodi­no) took place, draw­ing maps of the area and inter­view­ing locals who had lived through the war. The nov­el is so long and detailed because he believed that that was the only way to tell this sto­ry. To do it jus­tice, the can­vas had to be broad.

So War and Peace demands patience and focus, but if you are will­ing to accept those con­di­tions, it is well worth the effort. If you’re in the mar­ket for an epic work encom­pass­ing love, war, reli­gion, fam­i­ly, class, his­to­ry, and phi­los­o­phy, you could do worse than to bump it up that “must read” list of yours.

 

Leo Tol­stoy