Party Going, by Henry Green, 1939

‘Party Going’ is, if we are to believe what we are told by many senior literary figures, a masterpiece, and Henry Green is a genius. Sebastian Faulks, in his introduction to this Vintage Clasics edition, cites Green as a personal inspiration; W.H. Auden called him “the finest living English novelist”; Emma Tennant in the Independent called Green “a writer of undoubted genius”; Tim Parks in the New York review of Books called ‘Party Going’ a “great masterpiece”; A.L. Kennedy thought it “beautifully written” and claimed “we should know Green’s name as we do Chekhov’s, or Spark’s, or Stevenson’s”; I could go on. The problem is, ‘Party Going’ is vapid, dull, peopled by two-dimensional characters, and almost nothing happens.

This presents me with an obvious challenge – are these authors wrong, or am I? To be fair, it’s not just me – ‘Party Going’ is out of print more often than it is in, (the edition I found it in combined the novel with two others, ‘Loving’ and ‘Living’ presumably for commercial reasons – there is little thematic unity between the three novels, despite the similarities in title). Almost all of Green’s advocates, including those above, are at pains to point out that he is mysteriously neglected and “the most deserving of rediscovery by a new generation”. Claiming popular support for my position is a slippery slope – if popularity was a measure of worth, ’50 Shades of Grey’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ would be top of any great novels list – so my starting point is that there’s something I have missed in this novel. The question is, what?

‘Party Going’ is set in the early 1930s, a time of great financial hardship for many. It focusses on a party of rich friends, invited by their ultra-rich acquaintance, Max Adey, to take the boat train for the continent for a holiday at his expense. The title is ambiguous – going to parties is the lifestyle of this group, it is what they mainly do, but it also ironically points out that this particular group or party is going nowhere, both literally and metaphorically. A pre-Clean Air Act fog has descended, and no trains can leave the station. The group gathers at what we can deduce is Victoria Station, and faced with the prospect of a long wait they occupy a suite of rooms in the station’s hotel and wait for the fog to lift. The station fills with a crowd of “ordinary people” trying to get home. As the crowd swells, some of the party-goers find it increasingly menacing, even though it is actually well-behaved and cheerful.

Having set his scene, the rest of the novel consists predominantly of the group’s trivial conversations and occupations as they wait for their train. They are an unprepossessing bunch. Julia, the latest target of the sexually predatory Max, is childishly obsessed with her ‘charms’, her euphemism for childhood toys she has to have with her when travelling. Amabel, a vacuous society beauty, and Max’s current lover, is not invited on the holiday, but overcomes this rejection by simply turning up at the station anyway. The other characters are lightly sketched with little or no attempt to fill in their background.

The tension between the wealthy elite with their trivial concerns, and the cheerfulness of the working classes massed beneath the hotel windows, has suggested to some that this is a political novel, a commentary on the bored upper classes. Certainly the novel can be read that way, but it is a quite reductive, simplistic reading. In other hands the scenario of the group being trapped in the station could have been constructed as a metaphor for their pointlessness, going nowhere despite their wealth. What could have been a tense, claustrophobic and Kafkaesque portrait of the Party that never quite gets going, is instead aimless, irritating, and tedious.

The characters are very lightly drawn. Most are interchangeable (remarkably Faulks in his introduction claims this as a virtue of the novel) and only Max, the unpleasant sexual predator, (not that he would in any way think of himself that way) and the manipulative but dim Amabel standing out from the crowd: Max is a sinister misogynist, using his money to sleep his way round London, with a brutal contempt for his conquests:

“It was these desperate inexperienced bitches, he thought, who never banded together but fought everyone and themselves and were like camels, they could go on for days without one sup of encouragement” (494)

Amabel (in a short story by Saki, about Amabel, the vicar’s daughter, it is said “Her name was the vicar’s one extravagance.“) uses her sexuality to get what she wants, but is really in love with no-one but herself:

 “As she went over herself with her towel it was plain that she loved her own shape and skin. When she dried her breasts she wiped them with as much care as show would puppies after she had given them their bath, smiling all the time…When she came to dry her legs she hissed like grooms do”. (480). (I’ll give Green the benefit of the doubt and accept that this is deliberately comic).

Much has been made of Green’s modernist style of writing in ‘Party Going’. There is a fine line between impressionistic and incoherent, as in this example from towards the end of the novel – the “he referred to is Max:

“he was why she changed so she would forget what she had been six minutes back, he it was who nagged at her feelings when he was not there, and when he came in again worked her up so she had soon to go out though not for long, it was his fault, but then she knew it to be hers for being like she was about him, oh, who would be this kind of a girl, she thought” (520)

This rambling represents the character’s fractured train of thought, a form of stream of consciousness. When I first read this I struggled to follow the train of thought, but that is apparently the point. The novel’s opening line, introducing the theme of death, but also introducing a storyline that like the rest, goes nowhere, is:

“Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet.” The missing first word (“the”), and the other stylistic quirks in this sentence worried me – was this fractured language going to be sustained throughout the novel. Fortunately Green bored of writing this way, and mostly adopts a quite naturalistic style.

I originally read about the undiscovered genius of Henry Green several decades ago. Even then he was being promoted as a neglected great- it has taken me till now to finally get round to reading him. I can admire the artistry he uses here in constructing a novel where little happens, and where what does happen is trivial and uninteresting. But I found it dull and hard to complete. His appeal remains a mystery. I might however be tempted to try one of the companion novels in this three part edition once my 100 greatest novels challenge is complete, whenever that might be!

 

 

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, 1961

I was slightly nervous on approaching a re-read of ‘Catch 22’. We are all familiar with the experience of a much loved book, television programme or film being much weaker when revisited (for some reason this is particularly true of television programmes – some iconic series such as The Prisoner, or Monty Python, utterly brilliant at the time, are almost unwatchable a few decades on). Comedy that is side splitting becomes dull and predictable. Novels that once seemed compellingly relevant and important lose any impact. What once worked well in a specific cultural context now seems pointless. Would ‘Catch 22’ suffer in the same way?

Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler, 1988

The title of Anne Tyler’s 1989 Pulitzer prize-winning novel refers to the lessons given to pregnant women to help cope with labour pains. As with many other themes in this novel, there is a second, subtler meaning – lessons in breathing are the lessons life teaches us. This is a novel about middle age, about being married through good times and bad, and about disappointment.

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, 1915

Customer in hairdressers: “What’s that book you’re reading, love?”

Rita: “Somerset Maugham, ‘Of Human Bondage’“.

Customer in Hairdressers: [knowingly] “Ohh, my husband’s got loads of books like that.”

(Educating Rita (film) 1983)

Somerset Maugham isn’t read very widely nowadays, despite having been a central figure in English writing for a large chunk of the twentieth century, and despite this name-check in Willy Russell’s much-loved play. My evidence for this sweeping statement is limited, of course, but certainly he is much neglected by film and television companies, which is one way nineteenth and twentieth century writers gain a new audience. I think the main reason must be the dated, slightly faded air of his work – if, that is, ‘Of Human Bondage’ is anything to go by.

‘Of Human Bondage’ is yet another bildungsroman. In the foreword Maugham describes it as “not a biography, but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inextricably mingled”. The Maugham figure is a rather shabby anti-hero, the orphan Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and a sensitive nature.  Losing his parents to the illnesses that carry characters in literature off so very easily, he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the thinly disguised “Blackstable”. Philip is then sent to boarding school in nearby “Tercanbury”, (why bother to change the town’s name so pointlessly – was it on the advice of lawyers perhaps? The school is not portrayed particularly sympathetically, but it is not Lowood College either!) . Philip’s uncle and aunt want him to go to Oxford and become a vicar, a calling suited to his precisely located lower middle class status, but he rebels, entering on a series of ill-considered and fruitless adventures. He goes to Germany to learn the language, but this comes to nothing. He then tries to become an accountant but doesn’t enjoy it. He tries to study art in France, but eventually realizes that he will never be good enough. On returning to England he starts to study medicine, but has to drop out when he loses all his money on some reckless speculation.

Philip’s romantic adventures are consistently unfortunate. In France a fellow art student develops an unrequited passion for him, and eventually commits suicide. In London he falls desperately in love with Mildred, a tea shop waitress, but she is an appalling woman who prefers prostitution to being with him. He has a rebound relationship with a writer, but drops her quickly when Mildred reappears. Eventually Philip’s personal life begins to settle from the traumas of his earlier years, as he is befriended by the eccentric family man, Thorpe Athelny, and his financial crises are finally resolved with the death of his uncle, and a modest inheritance. The novel closes on a slightly false “happy ever after” note, as Philip becomes engaged to Thorpe’s eldest daughter, Sally, even though this involves him abandoning his dreams of travelling the world as a ship’s doctor.

The three films of this novel, most memorably the Leslie Howard & Bette Davis version illustrated here, all sensibly edit out most of the story, starting instead with Philip’s time in France, and focusing on the poisonous relationship with Mildred, which forms the heart of the novel.

Maugham took the title of this novel from Spinoza. In the ‘Ethics’ Spinoza argued that man’s inability to control his emotions constituted a form of bondage. It is possible that Maugham may have been thinking of his homosexuality in the same way when he wrote this novel – as an uncontrollable feeling that felt like an imprisonment. Being gay in Edwardian England must have felt at times like being incarcerated. The ending of this novel, when Philip accepts that his long held desire to travel is a hopeless dream, and he has to settle for marriage to a woman he has just told the reader he does not love, may reflect the internal struggles Maugham faced.

Although I have said the novel feels dated, to readers at the time it would obviously not have felt that way. Maugham has a frank approach to pre-marital sex – while it is never explicitly mentioned, and various euphemisms are used, the novel is very clear that Philip has sex with his various girlfriends, that Mildred becomes a prostitute, and that she contracts a venereal disease. This novel marks the transition from the Victorian novel where even suggesting men and women have sex with one another was taboo, to acknowledging its existence, however tangentially, and then to finally bringing it into the open in the 1930’s and beyond. This novel makes an interesting contrast with ‘The Rainbow which was published in the same year.

There is equally a frank approach to religion which in 1915 would have had much more of an impact. Philip becomes an atheist in the course of the novel, and the descriptions of his dawning realisation that there is no god are some of the most lyrical passages in the book:

“Man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but a physical reaction to the environment…There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence” (601)

Finally, a quick word about anti-Antisemitism in this novel. It is almost standard in novels of this period, such as when it appears, along with racist or derogatory comments about black and Asian people; it is easy to pass it by. And it doesn’t play a significant part in this novel. But comments such as “the undertaker was a little fat jew with curly black hair, long and greasy, in black, with a large diamond ring on a podgy finger” (479) play to all the lazy racist stereotypes of the time. They leave a really unpleasant taste. I am not arguing for sanitising works of this kind, because that is a slippery slope, but it is the casual nature of the offence which is so obnoxious.

Supplementary: Clothing in Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’

It is probably a statement of the obvious that the clothes people wear can tell us a lot about them.  In Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte uses descriptions of her characters’ clothing to give the reader ways of interpreting their roles and their relationships. One example of this is in the description of Jane’s clothing the first time she meets Mr Rochester (Chapter 12).

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, 1847

I think a case can be made for ‘Jane Eyre’ as the definitive nineteenth century novel. It has it all:

Romance – the scene in chapter 22 when Rochester teasingly proposes to Jane, and she slowly comes to realise he is serious, is as touching and effective as anything in Austen, and the final reconciliation in Ferndean House between Jane and the blinded Rochester would bring a tear to the eye of the hardest heart (but perhaps not St John Rivers);

Drama – spooky scenes in the middle of the night, the “I object” scene at the wedding, parties, house fires, tragic deaths and maiming, ‘Jane Eyre’ has pretty much got it all – although the only issue I have with the novel the extent to which it occasionally teeters into melodrama….

The supernatural – Jasper Fforde in the brilliant ‘The Eyre Affair’ has great fun with the ‘cosmic telephone’ that Rochester uses to communicate with Jane, but the novel just about gets away with this piece of nonsense without seeming too absurd;

Gothic elements – the spooky house, the mad woman in the attic, possession and long lost relatives appearing at inopportune moments;

Social commentary – education, the slave trade (tangentially), the condition of the poor; the emancipation of women;

Pathetic fallacy – after Rochester’s proposal the storm blows fiercely, the trees “writhed and groaned”, and thunder and lightening provide an ominous backdrop to the engagement;

A heroine to admire, with courage, principles, and determination, and a hero with a square jaw, deep-running passions, and a vulnerable side.

The novel is written in autobiographical form, and follows the eponymous heroine in five distinct phases of her life. An orphan, she is brought up by her abusive aunt, Mrs Reed. At the age of ten she is sent to a horrific boarding school, Lowood Grange, where she is lucky to survive. At eighteen she leaves Lowood to work at Thornfield Hall as a governess for Adele, the ward of the mysterious Mr Rochester. Running away from Thornfield to escape Rochester, who wants to marry her, but unfortunately already has a wife, albeit one who is mad and ineffectually imprisoned in his attic, Jane escapes to another secure refuge, Moor House, where she is taken in by St John Rivers and his sisters. Finally, Jane is reunited with the widowed but maimed Rochester at his back-up house, Ferndean, and “reader, I married him”.

At the heart of the novel is the relationship between the not-yet twenty governess Jane, and the almost twice her age Mr Rochester. They first meet in Chapter 12, when he falls from his horse. Despite struggling to help himself, he eventually has to rely on Jane for support: “I must beg of you to come here.” I came. “Excuse me,” he continued: “necessity compels me to make you useful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.” This incident, and in particular Rochester’s temporary disability, and his dependence on Jane, is not important for the plot, but it foreshadows the events later in the novel, first when Jane rescues him from his burning bed, and later when he is seriously injured, and depends on Jane more comprehensively.

Jane enjoys being helpful in this way, although it helps her calmness at their first meeting that Rochester is not particularly good looking:

“I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked”.

Their first conversation at Thornfield Hall is a little more relaxed, and although it largely takes the form of a cross-examination, it eventually warms to something closer to flirtation:

‘“Adele showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours. I don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a master aided you?” “No, indeed!” I interjected.

“Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch for its contents being original; but don’t pass your word unless you are certain: I can recognise patchwork.”

“Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.”…..

He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him. “Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,” said he, and look at them with Adele;–you” (glancing at me) “resume your seat, and answer my questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that hand yours?”

“Yes.”. “And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, and some thought.”

“I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no other occupation.”

“Where did you get your copies?”  “Out of my head.”

“That head I see now on your shoulders?”  “Yes, sir.”

“Has it other furniture of the same kind within?”  “I should think it may have: I should hope–better.”

From this point conversations between Jane and Mr Rochester habitually adopt this teasing tone. Rochester clearly enjoys being stood up to by Jane, in contrast with the simpering women he is apparently used to. He constantly refers to Jane as something otherworldly – elf, fairy, sprite, and asks her for a spell to make him “a handsome man”. This playfulness continues to the end of the novel:

“Am I hideous, Jane?”

“Very, sir: you always were, you know”

Jane’s gradual awareness of her feelings for Rochester, and her delight at coming to understand that her love is reciprocated, is done with a wonderful tenderness and lightness of touch.

This wouldn’t be an honest review if I did not mention the few reservations I have about the novel. At times it can be over-written, and some of the foreshadowing – constant references to fire, furnaces, burning etc for example – is heavy-handed. Mr Rochester’s behaviour, in retrospect, is absurd – he freely tells Jane about Adele’s illegitimacy and his affair with her mother, but hides the existence of his wife even when the evidence becomes overwhelming. The excuse offered for this – that knowledge of a madwoman in the house might deter prospective governesses from applying to look after Adele – doesn’t stand much scrutiny, when the resolution, to send her away to school, is readily at hand. The novel carries this all off with style – the romance at the heart of the novel is really all that matters, and that is done superbly.

‘Jane Eyre’ is much-loved, and understandably so. It is in the select group of novels one closes at the end with a satisfying sigh and is put somewhere safe in confident expectation of taking up again sometime soon.

Comment: 12 Books of Summer

I know I am coming to this a bit late, but having been encouraged by some fellow bloggers to join the 20 Books of summer challenge hosted by 746 books. I was hesitant about joining – 20 novels in three months might not seem too much of a tall order, but I am working my way through the Guardian’s ‘top 100 novels written in English’ list and most of the novels remaining on the list are challenging (‘Ulysses’, for example). But I have decided to give it a go, but revisted the target to dozen from the TBR list, as follows

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – a re-read, but a novel that really rewards a careful read rather than a rushed approach;
2. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm – I know nothing about this novel, but the whole point of the challenge is to get me reading things I wouldn’t have previously considered, so that’s a good thing;
3. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham – I have bought my copy of this and sampled the first chapter – looks interesting
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – I remember Faulkner being quite tough when I tried him a few decades ago, so about time I returned
5. Party Going by Henry Green – Green is someone I have read a lot about, but never read. You can’t buy this novel in a standalone edition in the UK, so I think I will try to find it second hand.
6. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren – another one I know nothing about!
7. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry – I have tried to read this several times, and never got further than a few pages. Definitely time to do something about that.
8. On the Road by Jack Kerouac – looking forward to re-reading this one.
9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – and this one.
10. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul – I haven’t read any Naipaul before, so don’t know what to expect here.
11. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald – I am slightly worried that this might be a romance, to which I have an aversion, but only one way to find out.
12. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler – it’s really about time I broke my Tyler duck as well.

I’ll keep you posted on progress, of course!