The Joys of Planning

I began work on my second chapter about a month ago - far, far behind schedule - and my process has been radically different. I've never planned an essay or a chapter in my life before; I've tried, but I get frustrated and end up launching into the fun, writing stage. I usually end up editing and re-editing my work as I go along, having a vague idea in mind which becomes more clearly defined the more I write and edit.

Up until now, it's worked, although it has always been rather an embarrassment to admit to. It certainly doesn't come across as methodologically sound.

Yet so far the greatest challenge I've encountered in writing my thesis is finishing my first chapter - and that is entirely down to my way of working. As a consequence, I'm planning my second chapter out meticulously - down to the paragraph. While I'm feeling frustrated again - I want to write, not plan! - I can't deny that this has been invaluable thus far. For instance, I'd originally conceived the idea to write about the conflict between classical and Christian interpretations of heroism between 1710 and 1737 - but quite honestly, it was hard to keep this on the topic of comic sword-fighting. If I hadn't planned out my chapter then it might have taken me weeks of writing and editing before I'd come to that realisation.

I am a rather reluctant convert. I still think that there's a lot to be said for starting out with nothing but a few key ideas in mind - it brings a spontaneity to writing that's hard to replicate. Certainly my more successful creative endeavours have been as a result of writing without planning: I know what I want to say and the mood I want to create, and those things would be lost if I spent too much time considering what ought to go where. Academic writing, on the other hand? Well, I suppose that deserves a little more thought.

REVIEW: Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek reminded me of nothing as much as Huysman's À rebours, the 1884 homage to the pursuit of pleasure and aesthetic sublimity, and which, if I recall a long-ago undergraduate seminar correctly, served as the inspiration for the misdeeds of Dorian Gray. I couldn't resist spending a while in thought on the similarities - and differences - between the two novels. À rebours tells the story of a French aristocrat who retreats to the country to experience art and pleasure; Zorba the Greek is narrated by a young intellectual who sets books aside and immerses himself in the culture of a Cretan mining village, with the eponymous Zorba as his guide.

Pleasure is a sublime experience in both and Des Esseintes and Zorba are devoted to the enjoyable, passionate encounters and moments of life. Both respect pleasure; both novels are devoted to its discovery. In common they have good, simple food, which is cherished in each - although Des Esseintes spends much of the novel with a delicate appetite. Compare:

The only ones eating were unescorted women in pairs, robust English women with boyish faces, large teeth, ruddy apple cheeks, long hands and legs. They attacked, with genuine ardor, a rumpsteak pie, a warm meat dish cooked in mushroom sauce and covered with a crust, like a pie.

After having lacked appetite for such a long time, he remained amazed in the presence of these hearty eaters whose voracity whetted his hunger. He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled.

His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese, made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish licorice but which does not have its sugary taste.

He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been poured. (AR 75)

and:

I looked at him and was very happy. I felt these minutes on that deserted shore to be simple but rich in deep human value. And our meal every evening was like the stews that sailors make when they land on some deserted beach - with fish, oysters, onions and plenty of pepper; they are more tasty than any other dish and have no equal for nourishing a man's spirit. (ZtG 277)

The latter is but one of many descriptions of a meal in Zorba the Greek; in each description (but perhaps this one especially), Kazantzakis emphasises the simplicity of such rustic meals. Zorba's educated narrator and the aristocratic Des Esseintes both experience a similar rediscovery of food among the people - the Eat, Pray, Love of the 1880s and 1940s, perhaps.

Yet unlike À rebours, which makes the pleasurable experience tedious and hallowed, Kazantzakis realises its underlying human purpose. It seems appropriate here to misquote a scriptural phrase; that Kazantzakis paints pleasure as made for man, not man for pleasure. It is perhaps no coincidence that Des Esseintes' aesthetic ideals are books, art, and perfume while Zorba's are sex, music, and dancing - the active rather than reflective pleasures.

Crucially, Zorba is not an intellectual; he is not bent to consider why some experiences are superior to others; he knows only that they are. Moreover, he realises, as does the narrator of Zorba the Greek, that the best pleasures are frequently the simplest and heartiest. Dame Hortense's world populated with past lovers and champagne is one of dreams; the book's narrator is so caught up with books and Buddhism that he has to relearn the appreciation of simplicity. He initially marks Zorba as "a sensualist...a connoisseur," (12) but this is wrong; sensualism is far too deliberate a philosophy for Zorba.

"Man is a brute!" (57) And indeed, Zorba's words aren't empty: rape and violent death are both hard truths of his world, the price that must be paid for living in it. Des Esseintes suffers for his lifestyle, too, discovering that it is detrimental to his health and that he must return to Parisian society. But his suffering is of a fading variety. If the world of Zorba the Greek is a game of chance, the world of À rebours provides nothing but a fixed, prolonged decay.

Which is the more successful novel? It has been some years since I read À rebours, which I disliked, so perhaps my judgment is at fault, but I feel that Zorba the Greek projects a burning transience, a humanist lust for life that makes the other book seem weaker by comparison. Des Esseintes' journey through the senses seems too artificial, too fractured to be real. Zorba's narrator, by contrast, is thrust into a world of combined physical pleasures, of which even after some resistance, he can't help but take full advantage - and which, unlike, those of Des Esseintes, are common, thriving activities. Is the world of Zorba the Greek à rebours? No - thank God!

Losing my way

Perhaps the most taxing part of writing this first chapter is trying to remember to stay on topic. It ought to be easy, but I keep finding myself writing about poetry, or Interregnum duelling laws, or even just plays that aren't comedies.

Yet from the earliest days, my supervisor has always had to remind me to stick to the topic at hand. She suggested sticking a picture of two men duelling next to my computer.

It's not as though I don't find the topic of my PhD interesting; I do. I want to talk about Behn's The Emperor of the Moon, Sedley's Bellamira, and Vanbrugh's The Relapse. I think they're funny, interesting plays that are minefields of discussion-points about masculinity. The difficulty is the process of getting there; I feel the need to explain the basic situation, and why, the response to it, and why, what this meant, and why...And why is the core of my PhD at the moment! I feel as though I'm going the long way round to get to the core of my argument, and when I finally get there, it doesn't stand out as the central notion I'm putting forward.

Blogger doesn't have the option to share my mood, the way I could in my teenage LiveJournal, but if I could, it would be "exasperated".

REVIEW: Guys and Dolls and Other Stories by Damon Runyon

When I began reading Guys and Dolls and Other Stories, Damon Runyon was an author I was previously entirely unfamiliar with, outside of the musical Guys and Dolls, based on his story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown". What struck me most - as I'm sure strikes most people - is the style of writing during these stories: the vernacular Broadwayese of the 1920s and '30s, and the near-absence of the past tense and contractions. For example, a description of a female character reads:

"One night I am passing the corner of Fiftieth Street and Broadway, and what do I see but Dave the Dude standing in a doorway talking to a busted-down old Spanish doll by the name of Madame La Gimp…Madame La Gimp is not such an old doll as anybody will wish to listen to…In fact, she is nothing but an old haybag, and generally somewhat ginned up. For fifteen years, or maybe sixteen, I see Madame La Gimp up and down Broadway, or sliding through the Forties, sometimes selling newspapers, and sometimes selling flowers, and in all these years I seldom see her but what she seems to have about half a head on from drinking gin." ("Madame La Gimp", 166)

This is a distinctive piece of Runyon prose, with all the characteristics that typify his writing. Particularly striking is his use of certain slang words which always replace the standard noun: most obviously, "women" are usually "dolls".

Yet aside from the writing style - I am by no means any sort of authority on American dialects - what drew me into the stories was Runyon's ability to make comically ridiculous his characters and his stories engaging and witty. I couldn't think of any respectable American male author before the sixties who writes in this way - O. Henry, perhaps, or Patrick Dennis, but nothing that really equals the slapdash, ironic, masculine cheerfulness that characterises Runyon's writing. Runyon's characters are clowns, and casting my mind around for a writer who also writes clowns, I came up with Wodehouse. Indeed, Wodehouse and Runyon are also similar in that they both use a stylised form of writing Runyon's writing style leaves room only for pure comedy.

Or is it pure comedy? There is an underlying conservatism that runs throughout the stories, in spite of the seedy speakeasies, the gambling, and the cavorting with starlets. Marriage remains a consistent, central preoccupation; marriage is something that women can expect, even if, as in "Romance in the Roaring Forties", the groom is switched halfway through the wedding. The subjects of homosexuality and the career woman get scarcely a mention in any of Runyon's writing here - unlike other literature of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s - and one could be forgiven for thinking that they don't really exist in the world he created.

Moreover, there is an ongoing need to restore order that makes it a conservative text. The typical Runyon story follows the pattern of SITUATION > EPISODE > SURPRISE > CRISIS > RESOLUTION > SITUATION. Thus in "Lonely Heart", the main character, Nicely-Nicely is a Broadway gambler (SITUATION) until he leaves to marry a widow in New Jersey (EPISODE). A farm-hand reveals that his new wife is something of a black widow (SURPRISE) which gives him some concern (CRISIS), until he convinces her that the ghost of an old husband is haunting her, and she commits suicide (RESOLUTION). Finally, Nicely-Nicely returns to Broadway and resumes his gambling lifestyle (SITUATION). We see this same basic plot in the majority of Runyon's stories: the denouement takes the characters back to where they were at the start, with little opportunity for growth. Again, this is a very Wodehousian mode of plotting: the restoration of order to a seemingly-impossible chaos is the bread-and-butter of the Jeeves stories.

There is no sense of life-death cycle in Runyon; his characters get engaged and married but there is an absence of birth and death in all but a small few of the stories; an absence of any world-altering event. In spite of the undercurrent of violence - Runyon's characters risk murder, kidnap, and assault on a near-daily basis - but there is only one actual death that I can recall, in the story "The Brain Goes Home". I was reminded of Orwell's essay on Dickens: "Dickens sees human beings with the most intense vividness, but sees them always in private life, as 'characters', not as functional members of society; that is to say, he sees them statically."

Of course, Orwell's complaint of Dickens was that his plots were outlandish and rigid; Wodehouse and Runyon, by contrast, excel at making believable the intricacies of elaborate plots, and in Runyon's case this is frequently at the expense of individual characterisation. Harry the Horse? Dave the Dude? Regret? Nicely-Nicely Jones? These are all the same person, bar some superficial differences. Even the nameless narrator of the stories blends into the background, a passive character who observes and concurs with what is before him; he has poor blood pressure in the story "Blood Pressure" but otherwise I couldn't come up with a single fact about him.

During August, I read books that were better-written (The Day of the Locust, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Miracles of Life) and books that brought me more enjoyment (The Thin Man, The Magnificent Ambersons). Yet none of them made me think about them to the same extent as Guys and Dolls and Other Stories did. Colourful isn't quite the word for these stories - for, as I said, the characters are not so clearly defined. Yet it's a fascinating collection; an excellent example of what a talented storyteller is capable of.

Conference

I spoke at the conference yesterday - and now that it's past, what a weight off my mind! I think my paper went fairly well; I tried to be engaging and informative, not going into too much unnecessary detail as almost everyone there was a classicist rather than a historian of modernity. I was filled with a strange, nervous sensation - I was speaking in the same hall where I had my very first lecture when I was an undergraduate. To look up at an audience, to be from the opposite angle for the first time, felt oddly surreal, as though I wasn't meant to be there.

There were questions at the end, which relieved me - one of my worries was boring everyone into silence - and after the conference was over, a nice postgraduate came over to me to talk about both of our papers. I wasn't expecting that at all, so I was thrilled.

I don't think I'd realised quite how much my thesis work had been put on hold by preparing for the conference; looking at what I've written so far for my first chapter, I feel quite rusty. I think one of the most awkward things about holding down a job while doing a thesis isn't so much the lack of time to write as the lack of continuous time. I have to snatch hours here and there most days - such as on my lunch break or when I wake up in the morning. It would be far better if I were able to gather up all these loose hours and use them properly at the end of the week.

Oh, well, time to get back to my thesis now that the conference is over. No excuses!

Conference

This past month has mostly been spent preparing for a conference I am speaking at next weekend. Unfortunately this means that once more the thesis writing process is delayed. I can only hope that this is the slowest part of my PhD - I had planned to have finished chapter two by Christmas this year. Will it happen? Only I can be responsible for that.

The conference itself is exciting - I never have a problem with the idea of speaking to an audience - up until the last minute, at any rate! I'm taking it rather easy and basing my presentation on the one I had to give in June in order to be upgraded to PhD status. The conference is actually a classics conference, but the involvement of antiquity  in my research means that I'm able to contribute something on the subject. I feel as though I ought to have a big disclaimer at the beginning of my slideshow, saying, "THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THOUGHT!" because I'm sure I'd get a great deal wrong if I were talking about classical Greece and Rome independently.

What I'm finding the most difficult - and this is really very good practice - is the difficulty of keeping on topic while still making the subject accessible. The fact that most of the conference attendees will have a background in classics rather than seventeenth-century literature will be both an advantage and a disadvantage to me. I can make some mistakes which may go unnoticed, but how can I talk about gentlemanly violence in the Restoration without going into some detail about the history and significance of duelling? It's a delicate balance.

Review: The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (and others)

I had a productive month's reading in July - the only low point being The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. This book tells the joint stories of HH Holmes, a serial killer active during the Chicago World's Fair at the end of the nineteenth century, and Daniel Burnham, the man who was a key player in the fair's creation. In the same tradition as In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the book tries to provide a semi-fictional narrative of true events, but the facts of the case worked to its detriment. An early chapter recounts an incident from Holmes' own autobiography but suggests that it played out differently, and far more sinisterly, than Holmes' description. There is no evidence for Larson's version; no reason why his version should be the case as it has no bearing on later events. The reader feels frustration rather than intrigue.

HH Holmes

I think that the book also suffered from its subject matter. True, there are interesting parallels between the lives of Holmes and Burnham. Unfortunately, there is no literary or dramatic tension in a business deal, even an important one regarding a large event like the Chicago Fair - particularly as the reader knows that it went through. Of course, the reader knows from the early chapters that Holmes will have committed murders by the end of the book and Larson still manages to retain some suspense - but conventional taste finds stories about murder interesting and exciting - it works as a narrative device in a way that a business deal does not.

This was, as I say, a lone example this month. I read two other books which had a connection to true crime: Jaycee Duggard's A Stolen Life, which shocked me in how much more candid it was than Natascha Kampusch's biography of her similar experience - and Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test. This latter book was an entertaining look at the way that Ameri-English culture treats madness. It rather reminded me of Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap, in his discussion of the idea that there is a checklist of symptoms that can be used to judge a person abnormal, and the subsequent dangers of such a list existing. This is no great surprise, as Ronson and Curtis are friends - Curtis is even interviewed in part of the book. Entertaining and thought-provoking, The Psychopath Test extends its discussion to many people people who don't fit with usual ideas of normal behaviour.

A particularly interesting chapter is written on the awful case of Colin Stagg, the original suspect in the Rachel Nickell murder case. Stagg was notoriously the target of a sting operation by the police over a period of several months, who used a female police officer to attract his attention and try to draw out his violent fantasies, in the hope that he would confess to her that he killed Nickell. He was eventually arrested - although he hadn't confessed - and the case reached the Old Bailey, upon which the judge threw the case out on the grounds that the police had used "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind" to entrap Stagg. It was a horrible case, perhaps loosely reminiscent of the Stefan Kiszko fiasco in the 1970s - for both Stagg and Kiszko were both arrested on loose evidence, chiefly because they fit the image of a murderer: Stagg was a pagan, interested in BDSM; Kiszko was an overweight recluse. A study on the case wasn't really what I was expecting when I picked the book up, but Ronson retold the story well, interviewing some of the key players in the investigation - and it certainly was an enlightening way of looking at the dangers of being too critical of people who appear to behave abnormally.

More journalism. More Awkward Situations for Men by Danny Wallace was a quick, comic read. Steinbeck's Travels With Charley took longer but was correspondingly far more brilliant: Steinbeck goes on the road, travelling across America in the 1960s and taking his French poodle, Charley, with him - following "the American tendency in travel. One goes, not to much to see but to tell afterward." My experience of Steinbeck had been limited to Of Mice and Men and East of Eden, and so this was an unexpected delight. It struck me as reading a book by a new and talented friend - rather shy in some places, deflecting attention onto Charley, but with many interesting stories to tell, and an earnest desire to be liked, without being sugary.

Steinbeck with Charley

The Bill Bryson style of travel-writing is still very fashionable these days and, as entertaining as it is, I came away from Travels With Charley feeling deeply acquainted with Steinbeck. And the book is funny: there's an excellent part where Steinbeck stays at a motel and acts as detective in trying to glean information about his room's previous occupant. He christens him Lonesome Harry, recreating his evening in a passage that is funny and insightful: Harry's letter to his wife, his evening with a date, his troublesome stomach, his loneliness. The final paragraph is particularly wonderful:

Three things haunted me about Lonesome Harry. First, I don’t think he had any fun; second I think he was really lonesome, maybe in a chronic state; and third, he didn’t do a single thing that couldn’t be predicted - didn’t break a glass or a mirror, committed no outrages, left no physical evidence of joy. I had been hobbling around with one boot off finding out about Harry. I even looked under the bed and in the closet. He hadn’t even forgotten a tie. I felt sad about Harry.

What a book.

Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway by Alyn Shipton was well- researched and for the most part interesting. I thought that it was rather top-heavy - a great deal is written on his life up until the mid-1940s, with the final fifty years being relegated to two chapters at the end. This struck me as rather odd - for if there was any 1930s personality who still had a thriving career in the second half of the twentieth century, it was Calloway - but perhaps Shipton had less of an interest in his later life. Certainly Calloway's great period of creativity was in the '30s. At any rate, Shipton's book is a far better example of a well-written biography than Stefan Kanfer's biography of Bogart, which I found so abhorrent a few months ago.

So I read several good books - some of them very good - throughout July. The best one, however, was one that I didn't like at all, initially: Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. It's a simple story, of a man who discovers that his wife and his friend were having a long affair - written in a way that goes backwards and forwards over the story. And for the first twenty pages I found it very slow-going - I didn't like that it wasn't clear what had happened; I didn't like John Dowell's impressionistic version of events. Then something happened - I'm not sure what - but something clicked. Everything that I had disliked up until that point made sense, and The Good Soldier became one of the most realistic books I've read. Every time Dowell revisited an event, each time with a slightly different perspective on the subject - I understood it the better, for isn't that how all events are filtered through our memories, changing with each mood and with each new bit of information? Although Dowell admits that he's biased and that it's hard to give a complete version of the truth - isn't that the point of the book?

Beyond that, I can't offer much more - other than to say that Dowell's wife, Florence, must be one of the most unlikeable characters in English literature. But it was a book I loved, was sad to finish, and cannot imagine improving. I can't think of anything constructive to say about it - nothing that isn't immediately obvious, anyway. Not that I wouldn't enjoy reading an essay on The Good Soldier - but it's a book upon which impressed me so thoroughly that my only response can be applause.

Technical update

Blogging is on hold for a little while as I need a new adapter for my laptop. Should be back to normal by next week. In the mean time, enjoy this picture of a Spanish don from 1688 from a collection of drawings known as The Cryes of the City of London - note his swagger, his fashionable clothes, his long hair, and particularly his enormous sword(!).

(Source.) 

 

Review: The Collector by John Fowles (and others)

Two thirds of the way into July so I'd better post this before it gets any further into the month.

I have already recorded that I didn't read any books for leisure throughout May, so it seems that throughout June I made up for last time. I finished Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire, her history of the complex, paradoxical, and often retaliatory relationship between Britain and America during the American Civil War; it was thoroughly, thoroughly excellent. I would review it but I lack the ability to do it justice; indeed, it is such a long book that a comprehensive review would take longer to write than I have time on my hands. Foreman has done a wonderful job; the inclusion of cartoons from Punch spread throughout the book alongside the text was an inspired decision.

I also read Alexander Masters' Stuart: A Life Backwards, which was what they call a moving read. This sensational biography of Stuart Shorter, a homeless man, is novel for starting with the end of his life and moving backwards into his past to show what influenced him to become the man he was by the time of his death. The idea is to look at Shorter's life as a kind of murder mystery: what killed the innocent boy he once was? The device works, and the final third of the book is extremely bleak indeed.

There were some duds.  Through work I received a copy of David Almond's new book, The Monster Billy Dean, which disappointed me. It's a post-apocalyptical story about a boy brought up in near-isolation, taught about Christianity but not about the outside world; Billy Dean is special for being able to communicate with the dead. Words are spelt almost phonetically throughout the book which contributes to the sense of Billy Dean's isolation. Unfortunately, I didn't think that the story quite lived up to what was promised by its cover and the publisher's letter. I think I was expecting something darkly atmospheric, something bloodcurdling enough to be a little trashy, yet with enough pretensions that it might be literary. I wanted to be reminded of the eerier moments in Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I wanted a sub-Shirley Jackson story - perhaps something about feral children. The book didn't do any of these things for me, and I think that my dissatisfaction irreparably clouded my enjoyment.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell - the story of an Ozarks girl on the hunt for her meth-cooking father to turn into the police - was rather murky. It was well-written - and far more atmospheric than Billy Dean - but ultimately forgettable. It did have some engaging details that I wish the film had retained - Ree's loss of virginity, her relationship with her best friend, the horror of her uncle's face destroyed by an accident while cooking meth - but it's not one that I'd rush out to buy again.

I read Diana Wynne Jones' final book, Earwig and the Witch, which was as entertaining as anything else she wrote. I adore Jones' writing - Fire and Hemlock is a regular "top tenner" when listing my favourite books - and this last of hers managed to strike the right note of being "darkly adorable" (the illustrations help). It was the story of an orphan girl called Earwig who's adopted and enslaved by a woman called Bella Yaga, who only wants her around to help with her spells; Earwig, a girl used to getting her own way at the orphanage, now decides to scheme her way into becoming a witch herself. Only the ending felt a little rushed - I got the feeling that perhaps it was finished by well-intentioned family and editors after Jones' death - but I still loved it.

In fact, I was all set to make Earwig and the Witch the main focus of this post, even though it was written for young children - but then I read John Fowles' The Collector.  I thought it was an absolutely wonderful book - sort of as if Nabokov had written Emma Donoghue's Room. Set in the 1960s, a young man is obsessed with an art student, whom he abducts and keeps locked up in the cellar of his isolated cottage, storing her like one of the butterfly specimens he also collects. I imagine it was an extremely difficult book to write - Frederick Clegg actually seems almost reasonable during his narration. It is only in the second half of the book, told through a series of diary entries written by the kidnapped Miranda, that Clegg's "weirdness" is put into perspective.

In spite of any sympathy owed to her awful situation, Miranda herself is not wholly likeable - she's snobbish ("The ordinary man is the curse of civilization" (127)) hypocritical, self-obsessed - but I was impressed by how much her imperfections made me appreciate her, and to her credit, she frequently recognises the flaws in her character, reflecting on what she's written and done and criticising poor behaviour. We talk about "real" characters in books - she seemed real to me. I certainly appreciated her interest in and ability to discuss literature - she was able to compare herself and her situation to other literary moments. Halfway through the novel she thinks, "I am Emma Woodhouse" (157) - I am Miranda - or at least, I was when I was her age, twenty.

Curiously, there wasn't - or I didn't catch - a reference to Pamela, an obvious example of captivity in the western canon, and considering the frequent allusions to Emma, Sense and Sensibility, The Catcher in the Rye, Romeo and Juliet, Robinson Crusoe, various paintings, and (most notably) The Tempest, this omission appears to be an oversight. Perhaps Miranda simply wasn't familiar with the work. Clegg certainly wouldn't have been.

Religion is a modest-running theme throughout The Collector; not the prevailing subject (that's class) but it appeared often enough to interest me. There are frequent references to Clegg's semi-religious upbringing; he was "brought up in the atmosphere" (13) of Christianity in spite of his nonconformist aunt and still retains the loosely puritanical beliefs of childhood. Certain things are "not nice", such as sexual promiscuity in women.

Miranda does not appear to have had a particularly religious upbringing - at most, we can imagine that it was vaguely Church of England, in the way that most girls of her class in the 1960s were vaguely Church of England. She believes in God - and even prays to him occasionally - although a Christian God is not a defining aspect of her life until the end. Early on in the story she asserts herself as a Buddhist, although she does not repeat this belief. It appears to be part of her self-identification with the Left.

Yet religious lifestyles are far more important to Clegg and Miranda than either of them seem to realise. Each of them unconsciously follows a religious path. Clegg, surprisingly, aligns himself with western Buddhism, which as I understand it, promotes the acceptance of situations for what they are. Clegg is unwilling to alter his own lifestyle unless necessary and cannot understand why Miranda can't come to loves him. In fact, most of Clegg's motivation throughout the book comes from the belief that if Miranda contemplates her situation properly, she will realise that she loves him. He is unwavering in this principle and his position at the end of the book is much the same as it was at the beginning. Miranda's failure to love him is her fault, with her "la-di-da ideas and clever tricks" (282).

By contrast, Miranda, for all her modern views, is demonstrative of one of the ideals behind western Christianity: that a person is imperfect and must strive for self-improvement. Her development is only partly spiritual, going from subservience to God to hatred - "he's a great loathsome spider in the darkness…God is impotent…I hate beyond hate" (255). Similarly, her experience with violence until her capture has been observant - the "H-bomb" and teddy-boys harassing Indians - and the idea of violence makes her "feel weak". Yet eventually a physical attack is something she must do.

Her experience has aspects of a religious retreat - albeit one of luxury. Being kept in isolation in a cellar for months, she has time to think and reflect. She must discard her former principles and compromise her beliefs in order to have a chance at survival and escape. Unlike Clegg, she does go through several transformations. Enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word for her path but her development throughout the book, her ability to think and question herself, are certainly increased. Would it be too hideous to retain the butterfly metaphor here?

The Beggar's Opera at Regent's Park

Last night I went to see The Beggar's Opera at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre - a wonderful performance. They used an eighteenth-century setting - unusual for older drama, these days - and managed a perfect evocation of old London. I was overwhelmed with emotion, almost to tears, during the opening: a Newgate prison scene, wordless, semi-comic, with traditional music playing in the background - it was so well staged. As a theatrical achievement it was aesthetically marvellous - as the Open Air Theatre always is - and was the perfect tonic for reinvigorating my interest in the subject.

Although there hasn't been a place for The Beggar's Opera in my work so far, the performance has made me look at it in a new way - made me think, "Ooh, maybe...!" I'm looking forward to getting down to work this coming week in consequence - it's so thrilling to be excited and interested in work.

Farces

I've read quite a few farces over the past few days - a fantastic dramatic genre for my research as they frequently emphasise the extravagance and bombasticity of heroic drama.

Picking plays to use is a dicey subject, though: I spent ages on Sunday looking for William D'Avenant's The Playhouse to be Let (1663), the fifth act of which, I had read, is one of the earliest examples of English burlesque. It features several characters typical of heroic dramas, tragedies, and romances - Cleopatra, Marc Anthony, and Caesar - presented in a decidedly unromantic way. Once I had finally found a copy online, through EEBO, it was a little disappointing. It was very short (not even five pages long) and about the best joke was the consistent naming of Anthony as "Tony" - as farcical jokes go, rather weak.

Reading Thomas Duffett's The Empress of Morocco (1674) now, which is slightly more interesting - especially as the cast-list reveals that the female characters were all played by men in its original run. It's a direct spoof of Elkanah Settle's own The Empress of Morocco and turns the London underclasses into a sort of alternative Moroccan nobility: Morena, the titular empress, is also an "apple woman", for example.

Speaking objectively, I do feel that a lot of farces of this period have fallen out of popularity deservedly. There's a lot of pantomime humour in them, which makes them extremely useful to use as sources to tell us what was popular in the late seventeenth century - the humour in The Playhouse to be Let, for example, derrives from the baseness of Cleopatra et al's behaviour, and indicates that the official take on them was far more serious. By burlesquing their characters in suggesting an everyday humanity to their behaviour, pretension of taste and ideology is being lampooned. As I say, this is interesting for what it tells us about seventeenth-century cultural. beliefs. Yet at the same time, no one can expect a modern audience to go to a play fully briefed on all the intricacies of Restoration culture and society. And as much as anything else, a lot of the humour is very cheap, frequently with a rushed feel about it.

All the same, I'll defend The Dragon of Wantley to the death. Cheap or not, any hero who wins the day by kicking his adversary in the bum is pretty funny.

The Assignation - Dryden

I read Thomas Sourtherne's adaptation of Oroonoko earlier this week and it was rather a strange play. I'm not sure whether I like it or not; I think I need to write a blog so that I can puzzle it out for myself.

That will come later, though. At the moment I'm reading Dryden's The Assignation, a standard little drama which I'm not sure I'll use. However, I did just come across an interesting scene. Ascanio, a man about town, and Hippolita, a novice, are talking about their friends' budding romance - and doing a bit of flirting themselves. They then have the following charming exchange:

HIPPOLITA: Dare you make all this good you have said of your Master?

ASCANIO: Yes, and as much more of my self to you.

HIPPOLITA: I defy you upon't, as my Lady's Second.

ASCANIO: As my Masters, I accept it.  The time?

HIPPOLITA: Six this evening.

ASCANIO: The place?

HIPPOLITA: At this Grate.

ASCANIO: The Weapons?

HIPPOLITA: Hands, and it may be Lips.

ASCANIO: 'Tis enough: expect to hear from me. II:I 

Duelling language! To arrange a romantic tryst! More than anything, this gives a good example of the sort of duelling language that a mid seventeenth-century audience would be familiar with. I was very excited.

The Rehearsal - Buckingham

On Monday, I opened up the document containing my first chapter and, perhaps unsurprisingly, realised that I was stuck. I spent six weeks concentrating on the same ten thousand words that now that it's time to move on from them, I'm outside of my comfort zone. Fortunately, I had a copy of Buckingham's The Rehearsal in my bag, so I spent two days rereading that and taking notes to get back into the flow of things.

I don't think that it's saying too much to claim that The Rehearsal struck a massive blow to heroic drama and effectively changed English theatre. Its success suggested that the burlesque could have, as Simon Trussler writes, a "corrective function" and that furthermore, "the grosser absurdities of the heroic idiom could no longer be perpetrated with impunity". (Trussler, 2)

Even aside from its theatrical importance, The Rehearsal is an interesting play. It has a rather MST3K feel about it: two "men about town" sit down to watch a rehearsal of a bad play, and make sarcastic comments as it plays out in front of them. Throughout, they discuss the play's quality with its author, Bayes - played by the seventeenth-century comic giant John Lacy - who is adamant about its greatness. The bad play is an explicit parody of the heroic dramas that Dryden was putting out - and Bayes is a direct parody of Dryden - and is utterly ridiculous, the chief complaint being that there is no actual plot. The drama is rather a series of scenes depicting people reacting unconvincingly to strange and random events.

Perhaps Buckingham's greatest scene is one in which the Prince Volscius falls in love with a girl just as he is preparing to depart for war. As he is pulling on his boots, he gives a tragi-comic speech on the dilemma of love versus honour - but cannot come to a conclusion and thus "goes out hopping with one Boot on, and the other off". A point charmingly and humourously made regarding the agonies that Volscius' alter egos go through in serious plays.

Unfortunately for my purposes, The Rehearsal does not have a duel in it. However, I shall use what I can, given that it skillfully parodies heroic modes, and there is plenty of comic violence throughout. I am especially fond of a battle scene which has only two soldiers, both wearing ribbon and carrying lutes. This is possibly the first instance of the "two man army" gag, beloved of later burlesques - the joke is, quite simply, that there are only two men representing enormous armies - although I am not certain.

Of particular note is the final battle, won by Drawcansir - a violent young man described by the author as a "fierce Hero". He kills everyone else on the battlefield, after which he declares:

DRAWCANSIR: Others may boast a single man to kill;

But I, the blood of thousands daily spill.

Let petty Kings the names of Parties know:

Where e'er I come, I slay both friend and foe.

The swiftest Horsemen my swift rage controuls,

And from their Bodies drives their trembling souls.

If they had wings, and to the Gods could flie,

I would pursue and beat 'em through the skie:

And make proud Jove, with all his Thunder, see

This single Arm more dreadful is, than he. V:I, 275-284

More powerful than Jove! Buckingham here parodies the belligerence of modern heroes, and in particular the apparent insistence that the greatest, most powerful hero must necessarily be the bloodiest warrior. Remember: up until relatively recently, heroism in English literature didn't depend on killing numerous people on a battlefield. This was especially the case in English drama - medieval dramas were almost exclusively morality tales or retellings of Bible stories.

Drawcansir is a parody of Dryden's greatest heroic creation, Almanzor, from The Conquest of Granada, a character heavily drawn from Achilles. Buckingham was not afraid of misquoting lines from Granada for comic effect; for example, regarding his forbidden love for Almahide, Almazor says:

He who dares love, and for that love must die,
And, knowing this, dares yet love on, am I. IV:III

- while Drawcansir says, in anticipation of a drunken brawl:

He that dares drink, and for that drink dares die,
And knowing this, dares yet drink on, am I. IV:I, 190-191

Indeed, Drawcansir is permissible as a hero in spite of the fact that he "frights his Mistress, snubs up Kings, baffles Armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good manners, or justice" (IV:I, 83-84) because his violent, often brutal behaviour is what had come to be regarded as acceptable heroic conduct. There is no inconsistency; in writing Drawcansir, Buckingham is simply taking the standard to its logical extreme.

A duel would have been nice, of course, as it would mean that I'd be able to write more about The Rehearsal than I'm now going to. Still, the play stands as an excellent parody of heroic behaviour, and perhaps it's one that I'll be able to return to at a later date. 

Exhibition

I was excited to read in the newspaper yesterday of an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery entitled The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. As you can probably guess, it's a display of portraits of actress from the late seventeenth through to the eighteenth century, and by all accounts it sounds as though there are going to be some good ones: as well as the two in the exhibition's title, this news article references Susannah Cibber, Mary Robinson, and (my personal favourite), Dora Jordan, some of the most famous eighteenth-century actresses (and in some cases, playwrights).


It does seem as though the exhibition's focus will be on beautiful young things which is rather a shame - grotesque women and women in drag have a place in eighteenth-century theatrical history, particularly in burlesques, and their portraits were certainly painted. Nevertheless, I'm greatly looking forward to it. October can't come quickly enough!

Still alive

Blog posts have been rather sporadic over the past month, mostly due to the fact that I've been preparing for my end-of year upgrade, to allow me to move from MPhil to PhD status. To do so, I had to submit a piece of work between seven and ten thousand words long, an annotated bibliography, a working thesis outline (including chapter breakdown), an evaluation of the past year and plan for the coming year, and exercises demonstrating my attendance of research seminars. Additionally, I had to make a fifteen minute presentation of my work so far in front of the other candidates, and have a fifteen minute mini-viva. Quite a workload. I just wanted to write about duelling!


Anyway, I've been very preoccupied with writing and preparing, the consequence being that blogging has rather fallen by the wayside. It was all to the good, however. My interviewers at my mini-viva - comprising of my supervisor, my advisor, and an external examiner - agreed that I passed, which is a huge weight off my mind. I could have my PhD by 2013!

I think my only downfall was the presentation. While I followed the guidelines for submission of work, I didn't realise that there were guidelines for what to include in presentations as well. As a result, I was one of the only people who didn't use PowerPoint, and I certainly didn't make any evaluations of my own work thus far. I was also much vaguer and informal than I ought to have been - so much so that I was asked (in full seriousness) whether the use of satire would be a part of my thesis. I was just telling some jokes to make my presentation interesting! To misjudge the requirements to the extent I did makes me feel embarrassed - I felt very unacademic when compared to everyone else - but I suppose I should try not to let it bother me too much. I was upgraded; that's what's important.

Under other circumstances I'd segue into a review of a book unrelated to my thesis, but this past month I haven't managed to finish anything that wasn't concerned with masculinity, duelling, or the seventeenth century. I did begin two (Hi-de-ho: The Life of Cab Calloway by Alyn Shipton and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - the latter an intertwined history of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer HH Holmes) but I haven't been able to finish them. I also bought and skimmed a beautiful book called Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It by Michael J. Trinklein. As you can probably tell from the title, it's a peekaboo look at proposed US states which, for various reasons, never made the grade. This is a coffee-table book, really, and I read it in the same way that one might read a magazine.

I have just started Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire, an elegant account of the relationship between Britain and America during the American Civil War. Foreman is perhaps best-known for her biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (which shaped the 2008 Keira Knightley film), and this second book is an excellent follow-up, vividly written with a real feel for the atmosphere. She does seem to be writing more from the Northern perspective - the issue of slavery, rather than independent state rights, is cited as the predominant cause of conflict - but I suppose that slavery was the overriding concern for the interested British. Nevertheless, it's shaping up to be a wonderful book.

I'm taking the next week off from thesis work to allow my mind to fallow a bit. It's been both surreal and difficult over the past few days not to think about it - I've got an open tab of Thomas Southerne's 1696 stage version of Oroonoko which I'm trying hard not to read - but I do think that it's necessary. As of next Monday, I'm going to be tackling the second half of my first chapter; once I'm back into a normal routine, this blog will be updated more regularly again.

John Valerius

John Valerius, born without arms. This is a portrait from 1699. Men just loved to be seen with swords! (Found at the British Library collection online; link to original here.)

Benchmark

I hit ten thousand words this morning! Even though that's only between an eighth and a tenth of the final product, I feel pleased. As it stands, I believe the chapter is about two-thirds complete; if I put my all into it, I think I could even have a finished penultimate draft by the end of the week.

One of the greatest problems I've faced is the order in which I present my argument. I feel as though I have four competing themes throughout the chapter - sword-fighting vs. masculinity vs. classicism vs. the seventeenth century - and I've spent a lot of time with my beloved whiteboard in an attempt to find a solution that will best suit what I'm trying to say. Do I start chronologically and discuss Greek and Roman literature and philosophy before leaping forward to the sixteenth century to talk about humanism and the flurry of literature inspired by antiquity? Do I put ideas about masculinity at the forefront and discuss their development through time?

I've settled on trying to give all four aspects fairly equal "page-time", although classicism and the seventeenth century are discussed more as influencing factors in the development of sword-fighting which is in turn an expression of masculinity. Much has been made of the post-Renaissance evolution of the "self-fashioned man", and self-fashioning (I think) was reliant on violence. All the great, powerful, and righteous protagonists of classical literature were invariably warriors who used violence outside of war to achieve their personal ends.

Odysseus' slaughter of the Suitors is a good example of this. He could have returned home and declared his presence to them (he is King of Ithaca, after all, and a renowned warrior), but he must display his cunning by tricking the Suitors, show his skills in battle by shooting an arrow through the axe heads, and finally kill them all for dishonouring him in his own. Late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature is filled with allusions to and variations on the classical world; I argue that it also represents young men as following in the violent, self-serving tradition of Odysseus.

The subsequent backlash against literary heroes of this kind is what I want to look at in the rest of my thesis...

REVIEW: Tough Without a Gun: The Extraordinary Life of Humphrey Bogart by Stefan Kanfer

I've read several popcorn books in the past month - by which I mean, books that are brainless reads which you might be embarrassed to read on the train. At work I was sent a proof of the new Sex and the City prequel: Summer and the City, a teen novel featuring a pre-college Carrie Bradshaw which proved surprisingly readable.

Then, following on from a childhood reading the entire Sweet Valley High series and a previous incarnation as a Sweet Valley blogger, I read Sweet Valley Confidential, the sequel set ten years later, which came out in the UK this month. I'm interested in SVH, and in '80s and '90s juvenile series more generally, as subjects for academic discussion and would love to read and write essays about them. In particular, I've long fantasised about "doing something" on SVH as a spiritual descendant of eighteenth century conduct novels.

I don't want to talk about SVC too much here but I will say that as a sequel to the original books, I think that it failed in capturing their essence. As a novel in its own right, I also think it was poorly-written and thought-out; I would never recommend it to someone unfamiliar with the series. Still, as a slice of what-happened-next, it's of interest - I wouldn't say that it scratches an itch but it acknowledges that there's an itch to be scratched.

I also read Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South, an alternative history which postulated what would happen if South African white supremacists from the present day travelled back in time to nineteenth-century America to provide the Confederate army with AK-47s, thus changing the course of the civil war. A ridiculous premise that actually works surprisingly well; I was quite impressed with Turtledove's depiction of Robert E. Lee in particular. Other than the too-lengthy battle scenes, it was extremely well-done.

As my discussion of any of these three books would probably become nerdy rather than scholarly, I'm forced by default to review Stefan Kanfer's recent biography of Humphrey Bogart, Tough Without a Gun.

I'll be frank: I don't think that it's a very good biography. Too be sure, it's readable - the introduction extremely so - but Kanfer shows all the typical biases of a biographer who's far too pleased with his subject. Bogart is introduced as a man whose life spans three centuries, which, though literally true (he was born in 1890s, found fame in the 1940s, enjoys a legacy stretching into the 2000s), is stretching the facts a bit. Really, we can hardly allow this to be an impressive claim, given that he was born in the nineteenth century's final year. In fact, had he been born just a week later, he'd have been born on the first day of the twentieth century.

Kanfer's characterisation of Bogart is also suspect. In his biographer's eyes, Bogart is the plain-talking man's man who's tough but fair; a complicated mesh of all the best characters he plays. The people he comes up against are unfair, or cruel, or misguided, or stupid. As represented by Kanfer, Bogart is rarely in the wrong in a given situation - a terrible attitude for a biographer to take. To brush over Bogart's more unpleasant qualities entirely; to see manliness represented in his alcoholism; to characterise him as a perpetual underdog, the prey of the deliberate vindictiveness of both Hollywood and his first three wives - is both distasteful and dishonest.

As a consequence, Bogart's humanity is veiled. For example, Bogart's first wife divorced him on the grounds of "neglect and cruelty" - Kanfer does not dismiss this but he doesn't go into further detail, either. And at times the desire to paint Bogart's nemeses in a bad light leads to pettiness. The woman responsible for him being summoned to court in 1949 is referred to as "a self-described 'model'" (143) - why not just call her a model, or an aspiring model?

Kanfer is also too obviously invested in the Bogart-Bacall relationship. I can sympathise - they were an iconic couple - but this results in Bogart's post-marital affairs being glossed over. Particularly puzzling is the case of his relationship with his hairdresser, Verita Thompson. Kanfer establishes them as having had a "lengthy affair" (95) between 1942-55 but she then receives only four, austere mentions throughout the book before her allegations of their relationship are dismissed as "unverified" (241). Why introduce her in such a way if she is only to be subsequently set aside?

Beyond Kanfer's cloying apotheosis of Bogart, the biography also concerned me in that it added little to my knowledge of the man that I couldn't have discovered for myself online. There were some amusing anecdotes that I hadn't heard before but there was otherwise little evidence of original research or analysis into either Bogart's character or Bogart as a standard of manhood during the 1940s.

This latter failure is particularly disappointing as the book does attempt some small scrutiny of this kind. A discussion of manliness is perhaps inevitable in any book or article on Bogart. After all, both the AFI and Entertainment Weekly voted him the greatest male screen legend of all time. There's a "Bogie Cult"; his image is synonymous with that of the private dick; his name is even slang for the monopolisation of a cigarette or joint. Bogart is associated with a certain kind of masculinity, yet all that Kanfer can do is wonder why "there never will, never can be another Humphrey Bogart". (252)

To my mind, this is a shallow question. A better one would be to query why Bogart's masculinity is still regarded by many as the epitome; after all, Sam Spade, Rick Blaine, and Dix Steele are from films now over sixty years old. It is true that the particular type of masculinity that they represent is no longer entirely fashionable, but it remains respectable. We remember his dry one-liners, his consumption of cigarettes and alcohol, his attitude to women as things to be admired as an ideal masculinity, even in this post-feminist world. Why is Bogart still cool, still highly regarded as a figure of masculinity, when his contemporaries Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Cagney and even Clark Gable (when was the last time you saw a Gable film that wasn't Gone With the Wind?) are forgotten or ridiculed?

In fact, we might ask why the version of masculinity exhibited by Bogart was ever fashionable to begin with. Kanfer writes: "In the early 1940s masculinity was defined by the appearances of men in uniform. Those who couldn't make the grade were defined as lacking in virility..." (88) This "definition" dovetails exactly with Bogart's breakthrough - when Bogart was forty-two. Why did this older actor, who had been relegated to bit-parts for the previous ten years, and was now being cast in noirs, find fame during a time when the other fashionable male stars were presented as young and belligerent? And why was he still successful in the early 1950s when the wave of Marlon Brandos and James Deans came along?

Kanfer does not attempt to answer these questions. Instead, he limits himself to occasional commentary on those habits of Bogart which do exude masculinity. At one stage, he concludes a passage on cigarettes with a commentary on the manliness of smoking in the 1940s, finishing with the wry aside: "After all, Adolf Hitler was the one who didn't use tobacco or eat meat." (116) In a book that has hitherto been distinctly lacking in jokes, I find this flippant remark bewildering. Is it a joke, the sole one in the book, about Hitler and in the context of cancer? If so, bad taste. Or is it a legitimate point? If so, it goes unexplained. Hitler's notorious conception of an ideal manliness is a fascinating subject; a discussion, however brief, of a western reaction to Hitler's manliness couldn't fail to capture my attention. Yet Kanfer leaves this avenue unexplored.

Without a sense of irony, he quotes from Jeffrey Meyers' biography of Bogart, that the star "survived twenty-five years in Hollywood without a drug problem, a nervous breakdown, or a psychiatrist." (244) He does not seem to consider that Bogart was hardly emotionally healthy, with frequent violent outbursts and an excessive alcohol habit - both of which Kanfer mentions earlier on in the book.

It's understandable that Kanfer adores Bogart, but I've long believed that the best biographies are those written with an academic neutrality. Mary Lovell's biography of the Mitford sisters is a good example of this, as are Lindy Woodhead's biographies of Harry Selfridge, and Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein. Bogart is one of my favourite actors; I like his voice, I like his one-liners, I like his left-wing attitudes, I like the idea of his relationship with Bacall. I appreciate that Kanfer loves him, too - and sympathy and admiration for the subject are both acceptable in a biography, provided that they are deserved and not overdone.

Kanfer, unfortunately, overdoes them, and consequently I think his book suffers for it. What I found strange was the fact that the first few chapters are interesting - even well-written. The story of Bogart's life up until the mid-1930s is presented with a comparative neutrality but Kanfer's love of his subject comes through in his writing. We anticipate the coming clash between Bogart the man and Bogart the celebrity.

Yet it is once Bogart begins to achieve some fame that the bias comes through. Suddenly the Bogart we are reading about is near-indistinguishable from the characters he plays. In the penultimate chapter - on the media inspired by Bogart since his death, which comes off as a simplistic literary review rather than an analysis of those works - he writes: "As American life coarsened...the curt, stiff-lipped men that Humphrey Bogart represented on-screen, and the sharp-witted individual that he was off-screen, took on a meaning far beyond sentiment. They stood for values that certain men and women - most of them far too young to remember him in his heyday - remembered and romanticized." (247)

What Kanfer doesn't understand is that this desire to cling to the romanticized version of Bogart is the very trap that he himself has fallen into. But can we entirely blame him for this? Bogart's success and legacy were founded on his celebrity image; Kanfer tells us that one of the reasons he continued smoking was because he was aware that it was part of his public persona (203). Kanfer's reluctance to relinquish the idealised, celebrity conception of Bogart is natural, given how much effort was gone into the creation of that celebrity. The veil drawn over its actors to present them with a new face fashioned by Hollywood is still active - and, I'd say, still effective.