—I’ve always found Thomas Malory so abysmal. Imagine my delight then when I discovered this enchanting long novel— actually five novels publisheNotes:
—I’ve always found Thomas Malory so abysmal. Imagine my delight then when I discovered this enchanting long novel— actually five novels published in omnibus form in 1958. The writing is superb. What a natural gift the author has for — well, everything. A wonderful find!
—Arthurian times. The Wart, a boy, in an impromptu quest to the far forest, meets Merlyn and brings him back to the castle to meet his father, Sir Ector. By doing so The Wart has rescued a prized falcon, survived the forbidding forest, and found his invaluable tutor.
—Merlyn’s educational transformations of the Wart into a fish and then a bird of prey are described almost immersively, so much so that the reader is rapt. I am not a great one for fantasy, but the execution here is so high, so masterful (I’ll resort to cliché) it takes the breath away.
—This novel was clearly a model for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell. I’ve noticed two correspondences so far; there may be more. First, in the way Clark handles the idea of religion in what is essentially a world of pagan magic. Second, in the way she incorporates allusions to the present day.
— White touches on all manner of myths, fable, fairytale, folk tale, etc. There’s a set piece in which the Wart and Kay meet Robin Hood and Maid Marian who are in the midst of a wrangle with Morgan le Fay, queen of the fairies. Circe is mentioned for her capacity to turn men into pigs. Reference is made to The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
The author’s wit at times seems irrepressible. An embarrassment of riches!...more
I know very little about children’s literature so I’m grateful for this book which has introduced me to the work of Aesop, Jane Greenaway — whose unreI know very little about children’s literature so I’m grateful for this book which has introduced me to the work of Aesop, Jane Greenaway — whose unrequited love for a deranged John Ruskin simply breaks the heart — Charles Perrault, The Brothers Grimm, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Richard Hughes, Mrs. W.K. Clifford, Beatrix Potter and Ford Maddox Ford, who, among his eighty or so books, I was surprised to learn, published four for children.
When sticking to its account of children’s literature, the book is wonderful and quite helpful. Though the last chapter errs when it uses outdated Haeckelian views about embryonic development replaying the evolutionary stages of the species. But this hiccup should be skipped — the book was published in 1990 — for the rest is incredibly rich and worthwhile....more
1. I am not a fantasy fancier. My preference is for realist fiction. But Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an amusing even charming book. (Quite aNotes
1. I am not a fantasy fancier. My preference is for realist fiction. But Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an amusing even charming book. (Quite a coup at 800 pages.) It has enviable pacing and and a honed narrative style. It is a faux-Victorian era dystopia with elements of light horror.
One theme is that magic, during the Dark Ages an everyday occurrence in England, has declined, and our two eponymous protagonists seek to restore it to primacy. It is set in the early 1800s, about the time of the Peninsular Wars and Waterloo, and these wars are imaginatively worked into the narrative.
I’ve picked up little Dickensian and Trollopian references. For instance, the party crush scene, when Mr Norrell is out in London for the first time, seems right out of Can You Forgive Her? And Mr Drawlight reminds me so much of Bleak House’s sponging Mr Skimpole. Clarke clearly knows her models.
2. Fantastic imagery is seen fully in all its aspects. For instance, the phantom British ships off France. Another example, Jonathan Strange creating roads for Wellington during the Peninsular Wars, where before there had been only mud. All of this highly amusing.
4. Very interesting how magic and religion are not hostile, but coexistent. Mr. Norrell‘s first great act of magic is undertaken in York Cathedral— the statuary speaks — and this is in not viewed as sacrilegious. Funny considering the hostility to this day between Christianity and pagan forms of belief.
“Oh! I know nothing of magic [the curate said]. I believe it is quite the fashionable thing - I have seen reports of magic in the London papers. But a clergyman has little leisure for reading. Besides I have known Strange since we were boys and he is of a most capricious character. I am surprized this magical fit has lasted so long. I dare say he will soon tire of it as he has of everything else." (p. 237)
5. The book is such a whimsical construct, so tongue in cheek. No wonder millions have adored it.
6. There is a line in a Jorge Luis Borges’s story*: “Down at the far end of the hallway, the mirror hovered, shadowing us. We discovered (very late at night such a discovery is inevitable) that there is something monstrous about mirrors.” I was reminded of the Borges line when in JS&MN we learn that all mirrors are in fact doors connecting all other mirrors via a realm called the King’s Roads.
Compared to Mr Norrell Jonathan Strange is a wild risk taker, which he justifies by way of some pretty specious thinking. He’s like a kid with the nuclear football. He moves over-selfconfidently through the narrative, ignoring his instructor’s warnings, until his comeuppance — and it’s a thrill!
N.B. If I have one caveat, it’s that the book explains too much. The Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer said: just the facts and the action. So too much exposition for me, but well worth reading....more
— Bleak House on the whole is astonishing. Is it conventionally Victorian? Oh yes, but there are pages and pRead this 25 years ago. Notes as I reread.
— Bleak House on the whole is astonishing. Is it conventionally Victorian? Oh yes, but there are pages and pages here of drop-dead writing.
— It reminds me, in its deft use of characters high and low, of the novels of Martin Amis — particularly Money, London Fields and The Information. Both writers also possess a keen grasp of the slang of their respective periods. Whereas Amis can be sparing in dialogue, Dickens is voluble almost to a fault.
— Surprising how readable the novel is after 171 years.
— Mr Skimpole is a sponge; Mr Jarndyce knows it but allows this drain on his resources since he finds Skimpole amusing. Later, we understand Skimpole’s con and how well it pays him. That he’s a child, doesn’t understand money— well, the fellow “doth protest too much, methinks.” These endless self-justifications become tiresome.
— Dickens use of patterning is often a pleasure. If it ever seems careworn though, I think it’s because he was writing this novel in serial to be published over a period of more than two years. So he’s creating mnemonic devices for his readers.
— Henry de Montherlant's famous saying "happiness writes white" seems undermined by Dickens's capacity to make happiness — and kindness — fairly sing on the page. Consider Mr Jarndyce, who is a doer of good works, and Miss Esther Summerson, whose very name radiates delight. But when Dickens pushes this pedal too hard — as he does in the scene between Mrs. Rouncewell and her son George — the result can be cloying.
— Preacher Chadband is vile with his halting oratory of pious hooey. Poor Jo, the little orphan, is blamed for being a victim, hounded for witnessing a key piece of the book’s core scandal.
"All this time, Jo . . . feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate . . . Though it may be, Jo, that . . . if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid — it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet!" (p. 414)
Thus we move toward redemption. But not for Jo! His death from neglect is hideous.
Later, Jo, in a fever, is rescued by Miss Summerson, who puts him up at Bleak House, only to find he has mysteriously disappeared come morning.
——Young Richard Carstone is such a pigheaded twit. He can't be told anything. He must make his own mistakes— by taking Jarndyce & Jarndyce seriously — and he must suffer. Sad to watch, like an addict toward the end, pushed on his course by the despicable Vholes. The speaker here is Richard:
“‘Mr Vholes! If any man had told me, when I first went to John Jarndyce's house, that he was anything but the disinterested friend he seemed — that he was what he has gradually turned out to be — I could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world! Whereas, now, I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him; that every new delay, and every new disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand.'” (p. 626)
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished!
—Interesting, for all its concern about the dysfunction of Chancery, there’s almost no mention of how the great 19th century families (Dedlock et al.) made their fortunes. There is Mrs Jellyby’s colonialist monomania for Borrioboola-Gha, Africa. Then on page 699 a passing reference is made to a “large Indiaman” trading vessel. (See Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a kind of fictional corrective.) But empire feels very much like the elephant in the room.
— Mr Bucket is a detective and the soul of discretion. The last third of the novel is effected through him. He’s the narrative glue tying virtually all the characters together. Indeed, he seems almost oracular toward the close, which is suspenseful....more
"I still felt, that ache about which there is nothing eFirst love.
"the terrible time of being young." —John Logan
The gay sex here seems deëroticized.
"I still felt, that ache about which there is nothing erotic, or not for me. I know there are men who like it, who go to great lengths to find others who will hurt them in exactly this way, though I've never been able to fathom the pleasure they take from it." (p. 38)...more
Despite caveats, I am awarding full recognition. There are such long stretches of gorgeous writing here. What an astonishing writer Dickens can be wheDespite caveats, I am awarding full recognition. There are such long stretches of gorgeous writing here. What an astonishing writer Dickens can be when he keeps away from cloying sentiment, his hobbyhorse.
I kept girding for the saccharine heroine (à la Little Dorrit). She never appeared but the novelist hews closest to his chief indulgence in Chapter 17: "One Night."
Here young Lucie, who has rescued her father from Louis XVI's Bastille, speaks with him — years after their safe return to England — about her upcoming marriage to Charles Darnay, a Frenchman also involved in the father's rescue.
Lucie in her immoderate selflessness is guilty about sidelining her father, who until now has received all her personal attentions after his great suffering. So here father and daughter expatiate at wearying length on their love for one another. This goes on for many pages until Lucy is convinced her father won't hold her marriage against her. In fact, he welcomes it.
Quite a slog when you consider how the preceding and succeeding chapters fly by. But it is a small inconvenience compared to what remains....more