The Birth of Media Power?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I had no idea what to expect when picking up ‘Arthur andGeorge’, by Julian Barnes.  I’d read ‘The Sense of an Ending’, and was very impressed with the sensitivity of the writing, the subtlety of thought and feeling, the integrity of the writer.  A collection of short stories also impressed me.  I just glanced through the Barnes section at Kepler’s, and picked it up.  It's a very well reviewed work (finalist for the Booker).  If acclaimed and by Julian Barnes, I couldn’t go wrong, right? I half-expected it to be a book about a gay almost-couple, but really had no idea.

Turns out to be historical fiction.  Arthur is none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes).  George is George Edalji, a modest first-generation Brit wrongly convicted of heinous crimes.  Arthur takes up the case after the fact, and does manage to have the stain erased, though the full correction sought is not achieved.  Yes, this really did happen.  It’s a pleasure to be so skillfully led into the world of England around 1900.  What a fascinating time; the empire is starting to crumble, and ethnic tensions are brewing at home.  Old-fashioned concepts of honor, duty, and faith are upheld, but the stresses and strains are all too evident.  The London of Monica Ali’s 'Brick Lane' is well in sight.

George Edalji

The book is an admirable performance, but I’m not sure that historical fiction is Barnes’s optimal genre. Barnes is capable of expressing more direct and striking insight into the human condition, but that's just not the primary aim of this book. The first third of the book is structured in short chapters that alternate between the early history of Arthur and that of George.  Both depictions are compelling and fascinating in their way, and are probably my favorite parts of the book. But the constant alternation and short chapters created (for me) an annoying rhythm that I wasn’t comfortable with.  I kept wishing that Barnes would stay with one story for longer and get to a deeper level.

But then the chapters do indeed get longer, and alas I was not entirely happy then either.  The narrative drive just didn't have the strength to push the prose through longer segments.  This is a true story and Barnes is constrained by the facts; a more satisfying but fictional conclusion is not available. I felt set up for a ‘Holmes’ satisfying ending, but real life intervened.  Unfortunately that means that the novel is also similarly constrained.  Not a fatal flaw.  To bring these two historical characters to life is admirable.  I’m sitting here in California in 2013, and having read the book I have a better appreciation of the unusual transitional state of Britain around 1900.  That is a testament to the novel’s success. And the has-to-be-intentional contrast between real-life legal/criminal entanglements and the literary convenience of the Sherlock Holmes stories is striking and apt.

There really is quite a bit to be learned here.  Consider the America of 2013.: tensions over immigration,  gun policies, racial issues.  It’s not all that different.  If we could see ourselves through that lens we could save ourselves a lot of trouble.  But no, we’re human.  That’s the good news and the bad.

Bravo to Mr. Barnes, but also a caution:  The raw literary talent clearly evidenced by Mr. Barnes in other works is significantly hemmed in here.  But given the task he set for himself, Barnes has succeeded.  I’m not overwhelmed by the result, but I have great respect for both the task and the effort required.

Schtick

Take a bunch of current literary mannerisms, add a good portion of sitcom talent, a more modest portion of literary talent, and a modicum of ambition and ego: you get Maria Semple’s ‘Where’d You Go,Bernadette?’  It’s quick, funny, witty, and ultimately a bit disappointing.  But it’s a fast read and well worth a few hours of relaxed time.  Take it to the beach, or to that place where you need an escape from more serious matters.  There are very, very funny paragraphs.  Stand-ups will drool in envy over the laughs-out-loud from some passages.

But enduring literature?  I think not.  The clock gets wound very tight in interesting ways.  The first two-thirds of the book bubble along promisingly.  The last third tries to deliver, but isn't quite up to the task.  It’s a lot easier to get those lovers into the grandfather clocks (an opera reference) than it is to get them out in a convincing and satisfying way.

I’m not sure that we need worry about the particulars here.  She’s talented, but don’t expect a consistently satisfying experience. 

Have ya heard the one about the . . .

Harvest

I once made the mistake of recommending Jim Crace’s ‘Being Dead’ to a new acquaintance.  She came across as an avid and inquisitive reader, and Crace’s award winning novel is among the most inventive and curiously moving books I’ve ever read.  The next (and I think last) time I saw her she returned my copy to me, grimaced, and remarked ‘Why would anyone want to read a book like that?’  Since then I’ve been much more careful in recommending Crace.

His latest novel, ‘Harvest’ did not disappoint me.  Both ‘Being Dead’ and ‘The Pesthouse’ focus on destruction and disintegration.  Crace’s special gift is to reflect multiple layers of beauty and emotion in  the dismantling of what humans have spent lifetimes building.  He manages this partly by investing so much meaning in the physical world, both natural and human crafted.  Buildings, animals, objects, plants, tools, clothes . . . they’re all described simply but poignantly in ways that immediately communicate their history, uses, and significance.  So when they are lost, mutilated, or destroyed (as so much is in a Crace novel) we sense the history and we experience both love and grief.  It’s uncanny that a writer can focus so unrelentingly on destruction but have such a profoundly positive message.

‘Harvest’ is the story of the destruction of a medieval English village.  The agents of change include strangers from the outside world, the forces of economic ‘progress’, and human nature itself.  The main character (first-person narration throughout) has spent parts of his life in different economic and social segments of the medieval world, and at the end he is forced to move on yet again.  The depiction of the peasants’ intimate (and perhaps shortsighted) connection to the land is quite beautiful.  So much of the power of the book comes from intimate representations of ‘things’.  We get to know what life feels like by learning about many of the physical details of daily life.  It all starts to go downhill when an outsider is brought in to map the land in an effort to convert the primitive and risky farm economy into a more advanced commodity based system.  But it’s almost as if the mapping effort itself, creating a representation which is a step removed from the physical reality, is the beginning of the end.  For Crace so much of the beauty and meaning resides in the immediacy of the physical world.

At the conclusion the main character departs, alone, somewhat broken, but also with hope for a new life in parts unknown.  He brings with him just a few necessities.  The one non-essential item he brings with him is a piece of blank vellum that he had made himself for the mapmaker.  The map was never completed, but the blank vellum had been painstakingly prepared.  It’s a symbol of the next story, his new life yet undiscovered, but also of the failed attempt to ‘lift’ the peasants one step up from their difficult and risky lives as more-or-less subsistence farmers.

Indeed the path of ‘progress’ is a difficult one, and it’s often true that we must first destroy what we have in order to be free to move on to something at least potentially better.  We’ve invested so much in what we have, so much history, so much meaning.  But in that destruction there is not just pain and regret; at the same time there is also beauty and much potential.  That seems to be the lesson that Crace teaches us over and over again in his books.  The human experience incorporates a kind of large-scale seasonal aspect that includes winters of destruction and springs of renewal.  And much of the harshness and the beauty of nature’s seasons can be found in man’s cyclical histories as well. We seem to have no choice but to build and invest, only to destroy so that we can build again.

Not every reader will appreciate Crace’s focus on the destruction.  I won’t make the mistake of recommending him to just anyone.  But you, reader, might want to give it a try.