What I've been reading: Pride and Prejudice

Okay, okay. This isn't the only thing I've been reading this week. It's just the only thing I've finished because it's the only thing I've been reading with any consistency.

Look, I'd been having a pretty rough week - it's the school summer holidays, we've had lots of visitors and done lots of visiting and I am an introvert with a personal space bubble of about fifteen feet. I'm worn out. I needed a comfort read, something fun, something familiar. So it was a Pride and Prejudice situation.

I have actually turned into my mother.

While it may seem strange that, with all my stated love for the darkness, for blood and thunder, I should be an Austen fan, you have not touched upon some squishy internal emotional wreck here. Let me make one thing dazzlingly clear to those who are not acquainted with dear Jane; this is as far as it is possible to get from mush.

Just as we disgrace Dumas by assuming he wrote for children, so we mutilate Austen by assuming what she created were romances at their worst - dull farragos of misunderstandings that would be resolved if people treated each other like human beings, sentimental works that end in inevitable marriages. Austen's worldview is bleak, dark, realist. Dare I even say it, they are proto-feminist novels.

Yes, yes, I know, we do not see Lizzy Bennet rolling up her sleeves and becoming a surgeon, nor Lydia eloping with Wickham because women should have freedom of sexual choice as well you know. Austen did not write speculatively; if she could not offer her heroines the hammer with which to smash the patriarchy, she at least gave them the clearness of sight to recognise it and a survival kit of workarounds to prevent it from crushing them.

One of the major criticisms of Austen is her desperate focus on marriage, but consider: a character like Elizabeth Bennet has no employment prospects. She could become a governess, work which paid - on average - a little more than farm labouring but which required a full abandonment of any social prospect. The family for whom she worked would view her as a subordinate, the servants would see her as an object of scorn and an outsider. Isolated for her working life, when she became 'too old' - at no more than 40 - she would be cut adrift on what little savings she had managed to amass.

If she could not get an appointment (likely, considering her relative lack of accomplishments) her income - after her father's death would be approximately £40. In 2008's terms that is roughly £1,400 a year before rent. Not to romanticise the position of the working classes in this time, but a labourer with a family could expect some income from his spouse and older children - an unmarried woman could not.

This is not to say that there would have been no way out. There were, of course, remarkable women who flew in the face of such social expectations (Austen herself was one of them, supplementing her family's income by writing) but she was very keen to make her heroines unremarkable. Too many of her contemporaries wrote paragons; she focused upon ordinary gentlewomen of no particular education, fortune or genius.

And yet, these unremarkable women prevail, and, as they do so, she show just how messed up is the system against which they must contend. The wonderful thing about Austen is that she shows us how the system is broken still.

Take, for example, Mr Collins; pompous, creepy, ugly and stupid. He makes Lizzy an offer (as the parlance goes), so, early in the novel, our heroine receives a proposal from a man she finds repulsive. So far, so romance. Yet this overlooks the tacit knowledge of Austen's audience - just as they would know how straitened the Bennets' prospects were, they would also know that 'marriage' is often a shorthand for 'sex'. And, boy, does Mr Collins employ that shorthand here. Among his first reasons for wanting to get hitched is to set a good example to his parishioners - doubtless reminding everyone that the traditional Anglican marriage service includes a bit on marriage being a way of allowing people to experience the pleasures of the flesh.

So, having not so much proposed to as propositioned her, Mr Collins received a refusal. And, in a move familiar to any woman who has received street or online harrassment anywhere, he refuses to accept this rejection as valid. Women, he claims, often say no at first. Of course, they don't really mean it, and with the correct inducements (another proposal, the advice from her parents) she will say yes at a later date. When Lizzy persists in her refusal, because, he turns nasty. In the most verbosely mannerly, 19th Century way he tells her that her market value as a sexual commodity is not particularly high, and she is unlikely to get other offers. Modernised, what he says is no different from the pick-up artists who go from a "Hey, sexy" to, "Fat, ugly slag!" when you tell them to stuff it.

And Lizzy is supposed to accept this. This - according to the mores of Lizzy's time - is a good match. This is security and relative autonomy and the assurance that she will continue to live in the style and class to which she is accustomed. To marry Mr Collins is to have a respectable clergyman's income for some years, and then the equivalent of £70k a year after Mr Bennet's death. She is not being offered mere financial security, but wealth.

I know, tiny violin. But this choice, this awful choice between lifelong prostitution to a man who is repelent to her in every way and poverty, shows that Elizabeth Bennet is in a damned good social position. She has privilege and opportunity in spades. She has intelligence, family, social standing. Her choices are far wider than that of many of the women around her. This option - which I defy anyone reading this not refuse - is one which Charlotte Lucas - older, less attractive, more pragmatic - grabs with both hands.That is the model, the society, the system in which Austen is working.

But she herself refuses it. Our author is clear; Lizzy should not be overwhelmed with gratitude for the attention of Mr Collins, nor for proposal of Mr Darcy (bringing an income of about 340k) - despite their dreadfully limited possibilities, Austen is adamant: her women are not commodities. Yes, they are circumscribed by money - Elizabeth give up her partiality to Wickham as she their joint income would be insufficient to raise a family - but they never sell themselves. 

Yet, Austen is not painting a utopia. She is showing a world that systematically breaks women down, beats them, constrains them. That she could have written such tales is clear from the palpable misery that surrounds so many of her characters. Would her characters welcome a world where they could love where they liked earn their own living without shame? Almost certainly. But they cannot have that, so they play upon what terms they can, and they win.

 All of Austen's heroines (with the possible exception of Marriane) marry for affection first, and have material comfort anyway. That happiness of that kind can be snatched in the face of such odds is the miracle of Austen's work. She saw the probable outcome of her characters lives and she refused it. Without leaving the stark bounds of realism, she showed that joy was possible, and love, and sexual fulfilment, despite every attempt of the world to destroy those things.

This is not a reconciliation with a broken system, this is a cry of hope. It is an acknowledgement that women are strong, that whatever else is taken from us, we can snatch a little handful of happiness. That with honesty and integrity and just a little bit of pushyness, it can work out. As a feminist model for the rebuilding of a utopia, it isn't much. But as an evisceration of the world's foibles and a, "hang on in there", it's wonderful.

Every time I read Austen, I am breathing relief that I was born in the late 20th century, not the early 19th. Every time I see the messed up conversations we are having about gender, finance, sex and relationships, it is a comfort, a promise, a ray of light. It is a cause for thanks, and for rejoicing.

 All figures taken from: http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/the-economics-of-pride-and-prejudice-or-why-a-single-man-with-a-fortune-of-4000-per-year-is-a-desirable-husband/ and http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/the-governess-in-the-age-of-jane-austen/

What I've been reading: The Count of Monte Cristo.

*Checks date*

Still here, I'm afraid.

Eeek. Sorry.

So, I'm on the home stretch with this, and this post this contains spoilers. Also, much SQEEEEEEE!

Where have we got to? Well, the Count of Morcerf has shot himself (YAY!), Valentine is languishing from strychnine poisoning (which has at least cleared her of murder) Albert is adorable (but not particularly bright), the footnotes were written by an idiot and Maximilian Morrel is frankly a bit of a dick.

Oh. And Eugénie is a lesbian. In case you hadn't noticed. Or if you'd forgotten.

 Seriously, if I had one complaint with this novel (besides the chronic idiocy of the editor) it was the sheer iron-bar quality with which Dumas handles Eugénie's sapphism. Because we get it. REALLY. WE GET IT.

Other than that, it's fan-fucking-tastic. After a slow middle bit (blah, gradual bankruptcy, blah, medical details of minor characters we don't really care about, necessesary foundation laying for this bit, blah, Maximillian bloody Morell...) it's all kicked off. Four (count 'em, four) challenges to duels, three deaths by poison, two attempted suicides by honour and AT LAST, someone blows their own brains out from feelings of shame!

Oooooh! And, while we're at it, the honour code in this! All the clenched fists and the deathly pale expressions and the choice of weapons at some place of your choosing! All the fainting and the thrown gloves and sudden reversion to calling your friend, "sir" like it's an insult....It's so delicious, so sharp and complicated and brilliant...

And Haydée, Haydée.... Is she actually the first portrayal of a sexual submissive in literature? Because I am shipping so hard...

So, yeah, this is basically such sheer, sexy, ego packed brilliance that I have been grinning for the last 24 hours. It's better, even, that Three Musketeers. And Dumas is such fun! 

That's one thing I never really realised back when the only copy I had was an abridgement. Sorry to hammer on this theme, but the biggest crime of the abridged versions is how they cut all this to the bone. The important bit is that Dantès shames Fernand, so that's all they give you. They don't give you Albert's anguish, his dilemma, his pride. They don't show him almost chucking his glove at Dantès in a crowded opera house while his friends hang around him with, "Don't do it, Morcerf, really, not smart." (And, seriously, that is a wonderful piece of pacing and building tension, even for someone who knows what happens next.) Oh, you get that Haydée is beautiful and submissive, but you don't see her taking the initiative, you don't see her shouting down her opponent in court. You don't see her bear herself like a queen. Without this, she is a child with a creepy crush, not someone in what is a prototype D/s relationship.

So, after slashing away all this wonderful stuff, you get cardboard cut-outs racing around as much plot as you can fit into 300 pages (a plot whose elegance and complexity is utterly muddled by these cuts) and, reading this, generations of idiots have the audacity to call Dumas a cheap cliché-ridden hack.

And, yeah, it's a bit melodramatic, it's a thing of bold, broad strokes, but there is also subtlety and real passion there. Last night, I read a scene of such breathtaking and tragic intensity that I suspect it will be joining Renfield's desperate plea of sanity  (Doctor Seward's diary, 1st October, 4am, Dracula, Chapter 18) as one of the scenes I murmur aloud in breathless, heartfelt tones every time I read it...  This damn fool of an editor thinks Dumas is condemning Mercédès here, but she shines! She burns like falling star! Oh, these feelings, so lost, so painful, so buried beneath years of torment but strong enough to control them and.... Ah! Perfect. Perfect.

This is everything I ever want in book. This is just....

Actually, it's probably the reason I'm using so many exclamation marks. 

So, go on. Clear your reading diary and have some fun. It's the holidays.

What I've been Reading: The Princess Bride, The Count of Monte Cristo

Inconceivable!

I suppose after last week's little rant about idiot abridgements, it was only natural I returned my attention to the most lauded and memorable 'good bits' version it's been my pleasure to read. I am talking, of course, of S. Morgernstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The Princess Bride, abridged for us lesser mortals by William Goldman. This was partly because of a recent argument I got involved in regarding the sexism that pervades said text (no matter how much I love it, it does. There is. Sob. Sorry) and partly because of the way Goldman's attitude towards adventure fiction reveals a parallel, but very different course, to my own.

The Count of Monte Cristo was written at a time when the genre lines that govern fiction were not so strictly defined. We do Dumas as much as a disservice by pigeon-holing him as a historical Romance writer as we do by perpetuating the myth that he wrote children's books. The 'Rome' section (the bit I've just read) is as pure and concentrated Gothic as Udolpho. It's all Italian banditti, Edmond-the-Vampire and slightly strained reference to Lord Byron. In fact, the novel itself follows the pattern of a Gothic beautifully,we follow our hero from pastoral (or perhaps maritime) idyllic poverty, through terror and bondage (and that word is ruined forever) into the more violent, 'primitive' places where different rules govern behaviours and men - remote islands, Italian forests, the Eternal City - only to bring that terror back with us to the stylish salons of the so-called civilised world. In fact, the evidence is that Dumas really wanted to write a Gothic in the truest sense of the word, in that he wanted to start the book in Rome, have us meet Edmond-the-vampire before we met Edmond-the-poor-but-honest sailor. Like the ambiguous, Byronic villains whose apparent supernatural origins are eventually explained away, we were supposed to be mystified by the terrifying, 'savage' honour of 'Sinbad the Sailor' before we understood the betrayal that had shaped him.

Thanks to the intervention of Auguste Maquet, however, that is not the story we have. So we, with our more rigid interpretations of genre conventions, we find ourselves expecting Napoleon, vengeance, true love and high adventure and instead get dropped in the catacombs of San Sebastiano with a bunch of Byronic bandits. 

Well I, for one, am not complaining. *Whistles innocuously*

Mmm. Edmond Dantès

But coming back for a moment to The Princess Bride, Goldman perfectly captures the savage realism and emotional challenge that novels like Monte Cristo offer to young readers. Especially denuded of the societal satire, the dirty bits and the political context, these stories are incredibly shocking beneath their veneer of 'far away and long ago.' The Three Musketeers is a tale of friendship that overcomes all odds and then just sort of... ends as the four men go their separate ways. The Count of Monte Cristo is about a man getting vengeance on his betrayers, on the man who stole his future and his wife and then, all obstacles removed, their enduring love for each other admitted, he.... goes off with someone else. The Princess Bride is about a couple who brave the the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fireswamp, torture, only for one of them to die and the other to marry another. No one even 'gets' Humperdinck!


They aren't fair, these novels. There is no Providence, no ever loving God looking out for the virtuous. And actually, come to think of it, our heroes aren't that virtuous. Goldman captures - perfectly - the frustrations of a child who has grown up with the sanitised, naive, 'happy ending' versions of these stories, only to discover in adulthood that they weren't simple or as reassuring, that the undercurrent of discomfort they created was their real legacy, their enduring power. 

After all, Who said that life was fair? Where is that written?

What I've been reading: The Count of Monte Cristo and Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers

They...

They killed...

Okay, I'm not writing this just now. Let's do the other book I've been reading, because that makes me happy.I'm together. I promise.

So. The Count of Monte Cristo, or as it should be known, "Stop cutting lumps out of my novels!" I get it, I do, I really do. They are intimidating tomes. My copy of Monte Cristo could probably be used as an offensive weapon but really? Seriously? The trouble I went to trying to get a copy of this that was complete and unabridged was ridiculous. Many translations don't even bother telling you that they've whacked great chunks off the word-count, just, "here, have a shorter novel. No need to thanks us for it."

*Growls*

Is it because they thing Dumas wrote children's novels? Is it because we still think of his work as 'trash', despite its enduring popularity? Are we just missing the entire point of the genre in which he was writing?

Look, I'm on chapter 37 of 116 and I love this book. It's got everything I want in a novel - fighting, fencing, torture, poison, true love... Well, sort of. The first thing that always astonishes me about Dumas is that, the second you forget that you are holding a veritable doorstop, you are swept up in the pace, the character, the wit, the dialogue. The second thing that surprises me about Dumas is his realism. Yes, okay, not realism-realism, but psychological realism, political realism. This is probably because our understanding of him is filtered through abridgements, through film and television adaptations that take at face value Dumas' claim as a moral authority, that give us clean jawed, morally upright heroes and excise all those nasty, dirty bits. Abridgements and adaptations that pay into the conception of the Historical Romance as trash inhabited by stock characters.

Look, we know Dumas was a hack. We know he wrote at a terrifying speed but has it occurred to you that his perennial popularity has less to do with the swash and the buckle, and more to do with the fact that he was damned good at this? We are told, again and again, that this is a novel of providence, a novel where Dantès is transformed into its agent. It seems to me that it is more a novel written against naïveté, against the idea of an impassive, providential force. The characters who believe their virtue will protect them, will justify them, are doomed to fail. It is only those who take fate into their own hand who will succeed. God offers no justice, it is left to mankind to take vengence, to reward virtue and to punish wickedness. That the near-blameless Abbé Faria is twice foiled in his attempts to escape on the very eve of their accomplishment should convey this. That, after foresight, intelligence and labour fail, Dantès then escapes through mere opportunism and base cunning should suggest that fate does not favour those who work hard, that providence does not support virtuous. In a cold and Godless universe, The Count of Monte Cristo tells us that mankind is the highest authority, and that it is a race of crocodiles.

Truly, excellent stuff. What's more, that Edmond Dantès is a bit of a dish, isn't he? (here we go again)

Lovely covers.

Alright, alright, I can do this now. Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers is the fourth trade paperback in Bill Willingham's Fables and has art from Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, P. Craig Russel and Craig Hamilton. The premise of the series is that the characters of all stories have been driven out of their homelands by the forces of a creature called The Adversary, and that the survivors have sought refuge in our 'mundane' world, and have settled in an area of New York known as 'Fabletown'. 

The main thrust of the series focuses on the modern day, political situation in Fabletown, especially the characters of Snow White and Bigby Wolf and the title story takes up shortly after where volume three (Storybook Love) leaves off. After it's slightly fragmentary predecessor, March of the Wooden Soldiers is a comic that has very much found its feet. It has developed into a strong, sardonic and powerful mix of detective story and fantasy adventure. The main characters are really hitting their pace as engaging, interesting figures with story arc that is separate from their fairytale origins. Good stuff.

The real power, though, is in the conception. The very basis of Fables is that your imaginative landscape has been laid to waste, that all the varied and magical lands of narrative have been torn up, pillaged and destroyed, leaving a few impoverished survivors to make a desperate living in a mundane, hostile world. To a reader, a storyteller, this will always be painful, and this is where Fables finds its real wings. They take the investment, the magic, the hope that you as a reader have placed in these characters, they take everything they represent to you and they...

They...

They killed Tam Lin.

The Earl Method: how to read a 19th Century novel

Eep.

As the undefeated champion of Varney, The Vampyre, as the mad, Twitter advocate for a faithful film adaptation of The Three Musketeers, and the girl whose summer reading list consists of at least three books that could conceivably be used to bludgeon someone to death, I thought I'd share a few tips on how to approach those kinds of books that give you arm-ache if you attempt to read them while lying on your back.

Now, while the so-called 'Earl method' is created with the 19th Century serial novel in mind, it works with most books of impressive length, regardless of their century (I'm looking at you, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell).

So, for the intimidated I bring you my tried and tested technique: no pills, no drugs, no unnatural exercises, this is...

The Earl Method: How to read a 19th Century Novel

You will need:

A novel. Specifically one you've always been meaning to read, but never quite got round to. It's probably one sitting on a bookshelf, looking erudite and gathering dust. Otherwise, there should be one at your library or local bookshop. If you have an e-reader, try Project Gutenburg
A bookmark. Even if you don't normally use a bookmark.

This is what happens to paperbacks if you don't use a bookmark

A table, work-surface, or the ability to read lying on your front.
Tea. Lots of tea.
... and maybe a biscuit or so.

Now, the table/worktop/seat in front of you on a bus isn't necessary, but it can be helpful. You don't need to lay the book flat,but by leaning it against the edge, you should overcome most arm-strain problems. Alternatively, if you read in bed, simply push the book into your pillow and raise yourself on your arms to create the optimum angle.

Now, there's the matter of weight sorted out. Excellent. Now, here's ten tips to make sure you finish it:

It works from books like this...

1. Take your time. Reading one of these tomes is a big commitment in time, and the novels weren't designed to be speed read. Just... make peace with that before you start. This is going to slow down your reading rate.
2. Find out how it was published originally. This might seem a little weird, but it can help with expectations. Was this a three volume novel? Was it serialised in a magazine? Is it a 'penny dreadful'? What was its genre and target audience? These questions will affect both the pacing and the novel's general tone. A novel published over half a dozen years will not be consistent throughout, may, in fact, not be a novel as we understand it. Try to meet it on its own terms.
3. Set yourself a target (especially if you have a deadline)... Have a look at the chapter lengths,the volume lengths, the overall novel length, and set yourself a target. This is especially helpful with serial novels. Breaking it up can really help get into the rhythm of a novel. Something that was published in monthly instalments is not intended to be read in a handful of sittings - its pace anticipates gaps, permits recaps. More 'literary' novels frequently have lulls where your interest may wane - if you read a little every day or so, you can get through the slow bits.
4. ...but don't make it a chore. If you don't meet a target, don't treat it like the end of the world. You're supposed to be enjoying this. Also, don't read it like you're trying to wring sense from every paragraph. There's a chance it won't all be directly important. Especially in penny-a-page fiction, there will be filler. In Historical Romances, there will be lumps of history. There may well be masses and masses of back-story. Feel free to skim this stuff - although remember skipping and skimming are not quite the same.  

   

   ...to ones like this.

5. Read another book, as well. No matter how much you're enjoying it, reading two hundred pages of hundred and fifty year old prose in a sitting will make the head swim. If you've met your target for the day, or are bogged down and unable to go on, read something else - something short, something familiar, something ultra-modern - whatever you need. This book's not going anywhere.
6. And on that note, don't be afraid to take a break. If it's wearing you down too much, put the book down and walk away. This is not quitting - you just need to do it sometimes. I left Middlemarch for two years at the end of chapter ten, then I picked it up again and finished it. I'm currently in a similar situation with both Vanity Fair and Les Misérables. I'll come back to them. So will you.
7.  Google is your friend as are the notes at the back of the book. If you get totally lost in the references/ quotations/ historical detail, you are not alone. On a similar note, try reading the phonetically rendered regional accents aloud. Oh, and swearing every time you encounter one. It'll make you feel better.
8. Remember that there is no shame in giving up...
9. ...but don't do it anyway.
10. And it goes without saying, but If there is a film version, try to forget about it. It won't be anything like the book.

So, there are my tips. Do you have any more? Or do you use a different method entirely?

What I've been reading: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, To Kill a Mockingbird, Preacher: Until the End of the World

I finished Gone With the Wind this week. My review is that the last chapter had my hands involuntarily clenching into fists so often that my knuckles started to ache. Let's be done with it.

So, now I've finally driven an iron stake through the heart of that dreadful book (not literally - I what do you take me for?) I've been free to follow my own projects and catch up with some real reading. Yay!

And, you know, it's felt like the Gods of Literature have been rewarding my for my perseverance. I have just read three books (three!) which demanded that desperate, breathless haste, three books that demanded I surrender those so-called necessities of sleep, food and personal hygiene, three books that were pretty damned close to flawless. I honestly don't think I've had a streak this good before. Kind of frightened of breaking it.

So, these books:

These 'Penguin Modern Classics' covers are bit boring.

I have been meaning to read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle for years. It's one of those books you hear whispers about, the sort of book that's mentioned in interviews by writers that you love, or tucked into book reviews as a standard against which someone fails or succeeds. Bookshops tend not to carry it, um and arr about it being in print. If you try to get a copy from the library you'll discover that there's only one in the county, and they'll take three months sending it to you.

Worth it. Oh, it is worth it.

Will you judge me if I say it's charming? Even if I assure you I'm not gushing or being sentimental? This book is like a spell, one that weaves itself about you, much as the narrator Merricat rings her house with protective amulets.

Yes, Merricat. At first, I didn't trust her, viewed her with the same aggressive curiosity, the same unease, that she gets from the villagers. As the novel unfurled (and it does unfurl, like something natural, like a leaf,) as it became clear that Merricat is not the kind of person one can trust, I began to do so. Caught in her hostile, lonely, beautiful world, captured by her strange, angry magics, I was captivated by her, began to like her, love her, trust her. Oh, Merricat may be a villain, but she is more faithful, more consistent than any of the other characters in the book. We see their grotesquenesses through her eyes. Her life of rejection, of isolation, of otherness we recognise; we know her intense wild joy from the shadow-versions of it that we have lived.

Or that was how I felt about it, anyway.

It is a book about food, how the way it is portioned out, created, corrupted, denied, the way it is analogous with love. It is a mythic book, one where the ineffectual, childlike rituals of our narrator slowly become a potent magic, one with a power to shape the world, to bind Merricat herself- the true 'terrible one' at the heart of the novel. I could write about this for hours. I should probably stop now.

On to another book about rural American life, another bood with a precocious, tomboyish narrator, another book I had been planning to read for a while. Although, I suspect the comparisons should stop here because the novel is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

I'd always been a bit dubious about reading this. You need to understand that, in my mother's view, Atticus Finch was basically the perfect man. When it came down to it, Atticus Finch played be Gregory Peck was the equivalent of... I don't know... probably Henry Tilney played by Paul McGann. From the comparison, you can probably guess that my mother and I have values regarding these things.

Well, I shouldn't have waited so long. The book is as good as the hype, better maybe. I could scarcely go two pages without finding a sentence, a paragraph, an exchange, that I wanted to read aloud to whatever long suffering person was in the room with me.

As to Atticus Finch? No, I would not leave home for Atticus Finch. I can understand why someone would, though. His attitudes to gender and race are not modern, but are about as progressive as is possible for the time the novel is set. He also shows a remarkably accurate (albeit slightly paternalist) understanding of the very modern concept of privilege. A wonderful, beautiful, powerful book. I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly as an antidote to the poison that was Gone With the Wind.

Last, but by no means least, we reach Preacher: Until the End of the World. Whereas this week's other books are tender, melancholy and poetic, while they focus on isolation, outsider statues, the effects of hatred and human compassion, Preacher is gleefully, viciously aggressive. While its main theme is a careful, moral exploration of religion and power, if it has an overall message, that message is that violence solves things. I won't pretend it isn't dark and nasty, that it doesn't splash itself across our minds with glorious, visceral impact. That is kinda the point.

Okay, it is not the book to read if you are triggered by... well, anything. It is bloodthirsty,it is vicious, it gives you a world that will kick you when you are down, one that will only back off it you kick back harder than you can imagine. In terms of the series, it's far better than the first instalment. I adored this book, but it's one of those when, on the brink of recommending it, I realise that it would not be everyone's cup of tea.

Steve Dillon's art is, of course, wonderful. There is a power and clarity to his lines that suits Garth Ennis' script perfectly. There are very few comic book artists who draw faces so expressively. There are even fewer who can make someone being shot in the head look so beautiful. Ennis' work - which didn't entirely convince me in Gone to Texas - is far stronger here, working with a wit, confidence and subtlety which drew me in from the very start.

I had real trouble finding an image that was neither too horrific, or too spoilerific. Still, lovely stuff.

Unashamedly violent, this book is not without tenderness, not, indeed, without a guiding morality. The scenes between Jesse and Tulip are painful in their sweetness, the balancing of moral relativity and moral absolute careful. There is some questionable content, sure - some jokes made that perhaps would not be made today, that perhaps should not have been made then. Some assumptions that aspects of the plot imply gave me pause. I can see this book being problematic, if not outright hurtful. But it is pervaded by a sense of joyous and perverse irresponsibility, a glee in showing the nightmares of the conservative mind that I personally did not find it offensive. Even if I did, I might forgive it: moving, harrowing, and wonderfully crafted, it also manages to be great fun, and that's better than you're going to get nine times out of ten.

Approach with caution,  but if it's your kind of thing? Hell, let's tall about books.

What I've been reading: Deaf Sentence, Gone With the Wind, and make it stop, please, make it stop.

Insert witty comment here

Did you know that if a man tells you any variation of, "You're gorgeous when you're mad", he can seek no legal redress when you punch him in the nuts?

Seriously, how does Gone with the Wind get classified as a romance? Scarlett, as I said last week, is alarmingly pathetic. Rhett Butler is vilest variation on human standard that I've had the misfortune to encounter in a long while. And it's racist. It is so very, very racist. Not just in a "of it's time" kind of way, or a, "call it problematic and rant online" way, but deeply, structurally, horribly and repeatedly racist.

It's toxic. I don't say that lightly. This book is pure poison. It's hateful, hurtful bollocks under a thin veneer of clothes porn. I don't believe in censorship, and viewed as a cultural artefact, it has some interest, but that there are still people out there who read this uncritically? The thought makes me cold and slightly nauseous.

This isn't to say there aren't some half-decent passages, there isn't some good writing, but the values endorsed by the book can be summed up in Melly: kind, compassionate, intelligent and with steel in her spine, she is the kind of woman I'd respect were she not a foaming at the mouth, unthinking bigot. This book terrifies me and not in the way I like to be terrified. It's a book which excuses the Klan, which makes out slavery was a meritocracy and destroys solidarity between oppressed groups. It is a book reproduces rape culture so that the victim is not just responsible for her rape, but for the deaths by lynching of the men who raped her, the arrest and execution of the men who did the lynching and any negative side effects other women feel because of her 'easy' behaviour. It is a horrible, irresponsible novel.

Don't read it. Please, do not read it.

So, feeling a bit fragile, I read some David Lodge. You know where you stand with David Lodge, or at least, I do. The slightly fusty, academic characters are enough like you to engender broad sympathy, but tinged with enough knowing ludicrousness that you walk nicely along the line of 'laughing at' and 'laughing with'. Deaf Sentence, based on wordplay, explores the tribulations and embarrassments and despair of gradual hearing loss, returning again and again to the theme that whereas blindness is a trope of tragedy, deafness is always portrayed as comic.

As with every Lodge novel, it has enough references and critical theory to flatter this reader's intelligence without ever actually challenging it, and it provides a smooth, amusing and occasionally cringe-worthy in its comedy. Then you hit the final chapters. Then you realise that there was a darker undertone throughout the book, a terror, a sadness, a deeper sense of transience grounded in loss of communication, the inadequacy of writing or of speech. In my slightly wounded state following the hatefulness of Gone with the Wind, the tragedy of the last movement of the book hit pretty hard. What Lodge is trying to explore - the tragedy of deafness - is managed pretty effectively, and of course, being Lodge, he offers us the kind of comfort we receive best - the wordless, human compassion of touch, the quiet, harmless current of school-room trivia. When words fall away, these things remain.

Still, not exactly nice on my emotions, so now I'm reading The League. I know where I am with The League because I've read it before. Except...

Except...

Why is there an elephant being winched down that dock?

Wuthering Heights: In defence of amour fou

So, I took the plunge and went to a book group. 

Wow. Socialising. With real live people-persons who had real people personalities. That's not happened in a while. The book we were talking about was Wuthering Heights. I enjoyed the discussion; lots of interesting stuff raised, tangents and ideas about, not only the book in question, but about the nature of people-persons, and the way that said people-persons interact with books. It was good. Naturally, I did my usual seminar dear-God-no-wonder-you-had-no-friends-at-University routine, but that's a story for another day.

It also raised something that's been brewing in my head for quite a long time – something about the way our current society thinks about love. It may surprise none of you to learn that I agree with Angela Carter.

“Well,” my obliging hypothetical audience supply, “what do you agree with Angela Carter about, aside from 'practically-everything-with-the-notable-exception-of-clitoral-orgasm'?”

For a start, I agree with her about Wuthering Heights. And about love. There is a significant overlap between the two¹. 

Obviously, the whole 'love' thing came up at the book group – notably the conception that Wuthering Heights is some kind of a romance novel². We were asked, more as an opener to discussion than anything else, whether we thought Wuthering Heights was a love story. There was derisory laughter, slightly incredulous glances, and there was me, too much of a fucking coward to offer disagreement.

Which is this: 

We have a real problem with love in this country (or this society, or the English speaking bits of the world. Whatever.) We have a problem with it. So often, in the discussion, words came up to describe what Cathy and Heathcliff felt: obsession, infatuation. We are not, as a society, willing to believe that what those two experience is love. Ask people what love is, and there is a fair chance they will start quoting Corinthians 13:4 at you³.

Patient? Kind? Right... Are we even talking about the same thing, here?

No. We're not. That's one of the problems we face, just to have this discussion: there are a dearth of words in the English language to describe love. Of course, some kinds of love are patient, and kind, and they are valid, important types of love. They, however, are not what I am talking about. The Greeks have it slightly better, they have agápe, éros, philía, and storgē, but even they do not quite answer my purposes. These are different types of love used, exclusively or in combination, in different kinds of relationships. Most often, the distinction is used to separate basic human compassion from emotional love from lust. But I am not talking about physical love as opposed to emotional love, and whatever list of those one needs to build a happy relationship. I'm not, if I'm honest, talking about relationships. A relationship is an ongoing negotiation between two or more people; a relationship answers to sense, to reason, to common, human kindness.

No. I'm not talking about relationships.

There is, though, a distinction in the English language, a distinction that tells us more about ourselves than many of us would care to admit. We talk about loving and we talk about being in love.

What the Dickens?

I have a feeling I've written before about missing the fucking point. Surely it must have come up, at least once in this blog, that far from being the respectable face of Literature, Shakespeare was a filthy minded bastard writing for a group of people who were considered little better than whores? That theatre, far from being an institution, was something known to contemporaries as 'The Anti-Christ's lewd hat'¹?

This actually hasn't come up?

Nah, it must have done.

So, I shan't bang on about tidying up the past, about assuming things were simpler and more respectable than they were². I shan't make a fuss about the mistaken concept that those really pretty clothes confer some kind of moral value upon a time period, I will simply say that I get it.

Honestly, I do get it, this need to romanticise the past. I get that if we don't romanticise something we might as well give up now. On a day-to-day basis, this ability to imagine is sometimes what makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning.

So, by all means – enjoy your fiction about Lords and Ladies, lusty gamekeepers, great artistic genius, the Golden Age of chivalry or whatever it is that floats your boat. But two small requests? Bear in mind it had fuck all basis in reality. And, please, please don't make my sense of irony jump down my throat and drown me in my own misspent bile.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to books, and to writers. There is a significant and important line between “dreamy eyed fan fic” and “what is actually going on in the fucking novel”. Of course, Henry Tilney is the perfect man, and life would be a much so much duller if I... *ahem*, I mean one... couldn't indulge in the odd teenage style daydream complete with anachronistic attitudes to gender and pre-marital sex. However, one really should remember that – while it is about marriage - Northanger Abbey is far more satire than romance. Have as many wet dreams as you like about Fitzwilliam Darcy but do take care to remember that Austen was an acerbic and potentially cynical woman. And don't buy this. Please, don't buy this: http://www.etsy.com/listing/115163054/honoring-jane-austen-this-pillow?ref=v1_other_2

However that particular travesty of literary interpretation is not the reason for this little rant. Not even slightly. No, this weekend past I found myself back in my old stomping ground of North Kent and managed, somewhat against my intentions, to wander into the centre of Rochester in the middle of its Dickensian Christmas extravaganza.

Now, Rochester is very proud of Dickens and, while he's not my personal cup of tea, I do think it's nice that a local writer gets the full treatment of adoration and civic display³. So, for one weekend only, Rochester turned out into its Victorian best. Crinolines abounded. The odd Gothic minded young women did a passable (and potentially inadvertent) impression of a demi-mondaine. Soldiers wore those terribly impractical but wonderfully smart red uniforms⁴, and one wanker missed the point entirely and turned up with a pair of goggles on his topper⁵.

Okay, there were very few rickets. There was no ostentatious penury, infant mortality or displays of brutality. There were not even the plimsolled, soot-faced waifs that frequent May's Sweeps' Festival⁶. And, yes, omitting all these is to downplay Dickens' role as a writer pushing for social reform but, I'll concede that good clean fun and late 19^th Century conditions of deprivation are perhaps mutually exclusive. Then I saw it. Letters three feet high, blazoned across a refreshment marquee:

Miss Havisham's Tea Tent.

You... you don't mean that?

Right?

Wanker with the goggles? Come back. All is forgiven.

1No. Seriously. http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300088841

2Or, indeed, grimier and more miserable.

3Actually, I'd rather we did it rather more often, only with less of the attendant nationalism, but you know...

4And pith helmets, which was a little unexpected outside of the colonies (and no, it wasn't a Home Service helmet.) but maybe they were supposed to be on leave.

5Actually, I love steam-punk, but that is now the OMT for steam-punk garb at an historical event.

6Well, it was a bit chilly and certain agencies would complain if the council pushed historical accuracy to its fullest.

'Mobilis in Mobili': A Historical Perspective on Submarines, Swashbuckling and Rodents

Hello, my name is Alys and I like 19^th Century trash fiction.

There, it's out in the open. My shameful little secret. They say admitting it's the first step.

“But what do you mean by 19^th Century trash?” I hear you cry. Well, what I'm doing there is making a statement about 'high' and 'low' art and I'm being deliberately provocative. After all, tell someone you're reading a comic book, and there is a good chance they will look at you as if you are illiterate scum. Tell someone you're reading a novel by Dumas they will probably nod as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Some of them will even say, “how brave of you”.

Idiots.

As a culture, we seem to have a fear of the weighty tomes produced in the last century. Some people say it's the length that intimidates us, others the diction. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the defining factor is time. Give it a century or two and any old 'trash' can become 'literature'.

My intention here is not to criticise the 'trash', but to mock the people drawing the line. There is nothing inferior about a good comic, just as there is nothing inferior about Dumas. It is very easy to forget that, in Shakespeare's day, theatre was considered 'low' art. It is very easy to forget that 'novel' used to be an insult. The reason we forget is that the establishment appropriates these things because they are good. But some of us refuse to forget that, in their day, these things were scorned as appealing to the lowest common denominator.

And that's just what they do. It's why they are so bloody good. In order to grab attention they are fast paced, rip-roaring good yarns. They have wild adventures and exotic locations. They are full of witty dialogue and cheap laughs. They are immensely enjoyable. And, all too often, they have what the current Literary establishment would consider flaws. All the heroes are handsome and strong willed, all the heroines are beautiful, occasionally feisty and generally prone to fainting. These are not novels for the pompous - if you have a problem with so-called Mary-Sues, I might advise avoiding them. They are escapism. Truth be told, they are trash. But that's not an insult; it's one of the best things about them.

So, from an repentant AA type beginning, I find myself becoming an enabler. It's pretty easy to get hold of 19^th Century trash – charity shops and second hand book stores are good sources. Do check and see that they're unabridged, though. If you have an e-reader, there is also the wonderful Project Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org) which will give them to you for free.¹

But... well. Before you begin, a couple of warnings.

19^th Century trash requires a certain selective cultural blindness. There will be words and attitudes espoused by otherwise progressive authors that make any liberal reader wince. The trick is to whisper again and again, “they didn't know it was wrong.” In time, with willpower, the effect diminishes.

Then there's the problem of science. As we are often assured, hindsight is 20/20, and you would not have known any better then but... well, it can get a little tiresome to be assured that the properties of magnets, or electricity, or steam will lead to this, that or the other in the foreseeable future. Likewise, hearing phrenology and physiology described as 'sciences' without a 'pseudo' prefacing it, can strike one as odd. There will also probably be an endless stream of slightly dubious information underlying the plot. Abandon your pedantry all ye who enter here.

Perhaps from my tone you can tell I consider myself an old hand at this game. Still, it's possible to be taken by surprise.

In line with my addiction, I've just read '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' (Jules Verne.) I had been meaning to read it for a while and I enjoyed it immensely. It had everything I could have desired: some seriously outlandish science (but check out that Nautilus, man!), more slightly dubious info on marine biology than I could ever hope to use, and the kind of anti-hero who can make girls like me go a little bit silly.

What's more, by the standards of the time, it's really quite enlightened. The narrator laments the greed which has endangered the whale, or that viciousness which clubs innocent sea-cubs. In the latter half of the book, Nemo consistently draws attention to mankind's hypocrisy, cruelty and tyranny. But the good Captain cannot stop man's man Ned Land from spending most of his time killing (or thinking about killing) things, nor the narrator for admiring that very characteristic.

Now, as I've said, I'm a seasoned reader of these things. Just as I did not let the word “endangered!” cloud my enjoyment of Hector de Sainte-Hermaine's tiger hunt in 'The Last Cavalier'. I tried not to get too discouraged when stout Ned shoots a sea otter for sport even though the narrator has admitted that they are practically extinct. And so, of course, I tended to read parts that involved Ned Land – or, indeed, any other human interaction with nature - with a fixed, but wry, smile upon my face. “It's just the time it was written” I reminded myself. “They didn't know any better.”

Then I read this:

“for Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct for destruction.”

After I'd read it, I stopped, blinked and read it again.

Nope, it was still there. That assertion, no matter what we do to nature, it can always repair itself. Verne's narrator states it as a matter of simple fact, as if it were obvious. Such innocence. Such naïvety.

And I, in my 21^st Century way, had been quite cheerfully assigning the label of 'arrogant bloody Victorians' (well, okay, Verne was French and, Victoria only came to the throne in... oh, you know what I mean!) Essentially, I had condemned them as being wilfully wrong-headed and ignorant rather than just lacking the dubious benefit of my experience (over fishing, mass extinction, climate change.)

Essentially, I had become the kind of person that I hate.

Because I get so annoyed when people start talking about the past as though it's not only a foreign country, but another planet. I get fed up of wannabe historians describing all life before the Industrial Revolution as an endless stream of fear, sickness and poverty. Fed up of descriptions of the whole populace huddled around meagre fires in leaking hovels or draughty castles, dressed in rags and warding off starvation with a few handfuls of barley. Fed up of the idea that for whole centuries everyone was mad with superstitious fear and terrified of being burned for saying one wrong word. I'm fed up with people telling me life in the past was so totally different that we can have no conception of the inner life of our ancestors. In short, I'm fed up with stories of Poor Starving Peasants.

Because I read. And the thing is, when you read the literature of these people, hear what survives of their stories and their songs, look at their public buildings (mostly churches, I admit), they stop looking like poor, miserable waifs hanging on for the Enlightenment (and failing that, the Renaissance). They strike you as people, just like you and me, making the most of their time on this planet and asking the kind of questions we would ask about morality, religion and sex.

Still, it's easy to forget how much your environment shapes your assumptions. Still, it's easy to be taken by surprise.

Another thing I've read recently is the reissued first volume of 'The Pan Book of Horror Stories' (2010, Pan Books, first published 1959.)

Horror is another one of my things, and it was another brilliant read. It also illustrates my point perfectly. Most of the stories in there are still so fresh, so contemporary, that it seems implausible they were written over fifty years ago and many of them are earlier than that. One of my favourites was Hazel Heard's Lovecraftian The Horror in the Museum.

By this point, I had forgotten the age of the book, had forgotten the relative age of the story. This, to me, was set in the bustling metropolis of the early 21^st Century. The characters were people I might know, the tone was contemporary, ironic, powerful. Then, once again, it happens:

“Rogers had once boasted that – for 'certain reasons' as he said – no mice or insects ever came near the place. That was very curious yet it seemed to be true.”

What? No mice? I should bloody hope not.

Now, I've not been sheltered as far as rodents are concerned. I've known of plenty of people who have mice in their lofts, or rats in their compost heaps, but, correct me if I'm wrong, is it not commonly accepted that most people no longer have rodents living in their wall space? Is not the Tom and Jerry style mouse hole a thing of the past?

The past. Yes.

We share so much common ground but, who, now, would think of mentioning that, “Oh by the way, I live in a rodent free house.” And who, two hundred, a hundred, even sixty years ago, would have bothered to comment upon a few mice. No, it is their absence - “very curious yet it seemed to be true.”

It doesn't occur to us to question our assumptions until someone faces us with something like that, something that seems to be an outright contradiction of good sense – not from the standpoint of bigotry or morality but of normality. Of expectation, even.

Because things have changed, and they continue to change. A couple of weeks ago Ian Birrell, former deputy editor of 'The Independent' described Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame as “despotic and deluded” on Twitter. As he included the necessary @, Kagame was able to reply and did so. In text speak.

In 1999, who could have predicted this? Text speak was a thing known only to those with mobile phones, and the internet was not even that prevalent (at least in my social milieu). Anyway, we were all far too worried that the Millennium bug was going to destroy computers forever to be thinking about such advanced communications technology. That was only twelve years ago. Yet when we think about it, don't we think of ourselves as the same people? Our world as, essentially, the same? Doesn't some part of us insist that nothing has really changed?

But it has done, and society with it. Rather more scary is the thought that, if we succeed in not wiping ourselves out, it will continue to change and that all the vaunted cultural assumptions we have will lose their force. “It was 21^st Century” they will whisper. “They didn't know any better.” Perhaps Jules Verne was being more insightful than he knew. It is only by abandoning society and all its trappings that we can see its constructs as beliefs rather than truths. And it is only Captain Nemo who can turn his mirror upon humanity and show us what we are.

1Local copyright laws permitting...