Michael Moorcock: The Laughter of Carthage (1984)

Edition: Phoenix, 1994
Review number: 887

The second of the Pyat novels - centred around a minor character who originally appeared in the Cornelius Quartet - takes his story from his escape from the collapsing Russia of the civil war which followed the 1917 revolution to a new life in the States. He is as unpleasant a character as ever, definite proof (if any were needed) that the narrators of novels do not have to reflect the views of the author. In this novel, Pyat becomes involved with the Klu Klux Klan, and this is just an extension of his racist views from his earlier condemnation of Jews and Turks. The racism of our past is easily forgotten; it can be seen in the writers who have survived - Kipling, Buchan and Haggard, and to a greater extent two of the most popular twentieth century authors of all, Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie - but is even clearer in those who have now basically been forgotten or whose politics have been overshadowed by what they did (such as film director D.W. Griffith).

It is relatively easy to see why Moorcock wanted to write about Pyat despite his lack of sympathy with the kind of views he would give the character. It can be very difficult for those who would be called liberals to understand the way that people like Pyat think, and Moorcock has certainly managed to give an insight into the paranoid world of conspiracy theories these people often espouse. (The title refers to this; Carthage is Pyat's term for the "decadent" Eastern and African influences which in his view were at this time constantly trying to bring down the virtuous white civilization.) Ironically, while constantly bemoaning the way in which most people have been hoodwinked into thinking these conspiracies non-existent, Pyat is constantly being the innocent dupe - assuming his memoirs to be honest - of others who use him to front fraudulent schemes.

The von Bek novels, particularly The City in the Autumn Stars, demonstrated that Moorcock had the ability to write great historical novels as well as atmospheric fantasy. In the Pyat series, this talent is fully realised. In The Laughter of Carthage, we have a meticulously researched insight into the past. There may be similarities to Flashman, but these are mainly because of the antiheroic central character; this series is stronger, more hard hitting.

James Joyce: Finnegans Wake (1939)

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 888


Joyce's final work could well claim to be the most impenetrable twentieth century novel of all. Even in a time when experimental  techniques have flourished, it stands out as a virtually unreadable collection of immensely clever ideas.

In Ulysses, the most difficult section to follow is the scene where Bloom visits the brothel, which is laid out like a bizarre play. It is full of allusions and wordplays, many of them quite obscure. Finnegans Wake basically begins where that scene left off. Few of the  words are actually standard English; most are transformed to have double meanings (at least!). A typical, if simple, example is the word "hiberniating", which is clearly from the context a transformation of hibernating but with the extra letter to make it refer to Ireland (Hibernia being the Latin name for Ireland). It thus has connotations of Ireland as a sleepy backwater, away from the centre of European affairs. This sort of effect must make the novel a proofreader's nightmare.

In Ulysses the desire to concentrate on the clever surface of the prose at the expense of underlying meaning can for the most part be resisted; in Finnegans Wake, where almost every word has two or three meanings which require an effort to untangle, this temptation becomes almost overwhelming. I found that two things which help are to imagine the text being read in an Irish accent (which makes sense of some of the spelling) and to keep the edge of a bookmark under the line being read (to prevent the eye from straying). The novel is very hard work to read, and it is admiration for its cleverness in the manipulation of language which keeps one going. In this way, it is like a particular kind of poetry (The Wasteland being a good example) rather than
other novels.

So what is Finnegans Wake about? Like almost all of Joyce's prose, the setting is Dublin. This is not the real city in the same way it is in The Dubliners or Ulysses, but more a place which is a metaphor for I am not quite sure what - the world, as the centre of a mythic universe, perhaps. (It is clearly an extension of the relation of Dublin geography to the locations of Homer's Odyssey in Ulysses.) Finnegan is a bricklayer who has fallen to his death, and this is linked to the fall in the garden of Eden in the very first sentence of the novel. (This is probably the best known quotation of the whole novel, being printed on Irish bank notes: "Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's..." - which is also I presume a reference to Eden Quay on the Liffey near the Abbey Theatre.) Other characters combine archteypal significance with personification of Dublin geography - H.C. Earwicker (Here Comes Everybody) is also Howth Castle and Environs.

In the end, the details of what Finnegans Wake is about are not particularly important. It is a novel which is a celebration of the pleasure of playing with language. Its most obvious precursors are Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky, particularly the latter. There are still writers who enjoy playing with language in this sort of way, mainly for comic effect - Spike Milligan is an example - but in the end the novel perhaps marks a bit of a dead end in modern literature, having taken the idea of the pun as far as it can possibly go.

Kate Ellis: The Funeral Boat (2000)

Edition: Piatkus, 2000
Review number: 886

Having read some good review of Ellis' other mysteries featuring Wesley Peterson, I was initially disappointed by The Funeral Boat. The beginning is badly let down by poor dialogue, and I seriously considered abandoning the novel after the first two or three chapters. Things improve, even though unconvincing dialogue remains the novel's most serious flaw.

The story begins with the discovery of a body on a Devon farm, which soon seems to be likely to be a Viking warrior buried a thousand years ago rather than, as the police hoped, a villain who once lived at the farm, who had disappeared some years earlier. At about the same time a Danish tourist has gone missing, kidnapped, and there is a spate of armed robberies at local farms. Every one of these crimes - as well as the body - seems to Peterson to be bizarrely conntected to Viking raids in the area, though his original desire to become an archaeologist rather than a policeman might have something to do with this.

Apart from the dialogue, there is much to admire in The Funeral Boat. It is well characterised, the combination of policework and archaeology is unusual, and there are nice little touches of humour. I suspect that even so it is likely to be one of the weaker novels in the series, so that I look forward to trying others.

M. John Harrison: Signs of Life (1997)

Edition: Flamingo, 1998
Review number: 885

The still quite new industry of bioengineering has always been an ethically controversial one. This is the subject of Harrison's novel, which describes the human relationships in a small firm of couriers specialising in the field. Their business hovers around the border of the illegal - biological waste, cultures and sometimes even live hosts are what they carry. The main characters, Mick "China" Rose and Choe Ashton, run the company; Rose narrates, and seems always to be more fastidious about what they do - quite often, he doesn't want to know what they are carrying.

The novel is set rather vaguely around the end of the twentieth century, though the event which drives the second half of the novel, the decision of Rose's girlfriend to have some experimental cosmetic surgery, definitely belongs to today's future. While not feeling like a science fiction novel, Signs of Life is full of ideas and certainly makes the reader think about the ethics of the industry and the lack of ethics of those working in it. As Harrison's past work leads us to expect, the novel is extremely well written; its subject matter, however, is not for the squeamish.

Richard P. Feynman: The Meaning of It All (1998)

Edition: Viking, 1998 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 884

These three lectures, about science, society, philosophy, religion and so on, were delivered in the early sixties but not published until after Feynman's death. They read as though they are basically transcriptions of more or less off the cuff speaking rather than as composed in written form for the book.

Basically the theme of the talks is how science relates to society's other concerns, with interesting digressions on subjects like why politicians' promises can't be trusted (because real life situations are often too complex for sound bit answers). The sections where Feynman defines science and where he talks about religion are particularly interesting, but there are thought provoking ideas throughout.

There are two - at least - disappointing aspects to the lectures. One is the occasional piece of naive American patriotism, endorsing the space race, for example, because it wouldn't do to let the Russians get too far ahead. This is more a product of the time and place than anything else, but it certainly dates what is said and reduces the impact of the more interesting bits.

The other problem is more serious, and pervades the whole book. The general tone of the lectures is over-simplified, and has a tendency when written down rather than spoken to come over as patronising. Feynman was a great communicator, and I suspect this problem is a result of the lectures being transcribed from the oral to written medium without editing. The Meaning of It All is interesting, but could have been fascinating if intended to be a book from the start.

Ursula K. le Guin: The Farthest Shore (1973)

Edition: Puffin, 1974
Review number: 883

The third, and for many years, final, volume of le Guin's Earthsea series is again a bleak novel. It is more explicitly about death than the earlier two - that is what the title refers to - though it is treated in a less personal way here and so The Farthest Shore may be a novel suitable for younger children than The Tombs of Atuan.

Sparrowhawk is now an old man by Earthsea standards (about fifty), and is Archmage of the wizard's isle of Roke. There, the wizards begin to hear rumours from the farthest reaches of Earthsea that magic is ceasing to work. A prince from the West Reach comes with a definite message to this effect, and Sparrowhawk sets off with him on a quest to find out what is happening.

This turns out to be, in fact, people giving up their power for a promise of eternal life. The life they then have is only a pale reflection of real living, and brings a grey world without emotion or joy - or magic. It is possible that there is a subtext here about the way in which Puritan Christianity suppressed the practice of magic, but this may be reading rather too much into le Guin's writing.

While The Farthest Shore was a satisfying conclusion to the series when it was a trilogy, the first two novels are more memorable; the characters of A Wizard of Earthsea and the setting of The Tombs of Atuan make each of these books stick in the mind. This is probably a reason behind the eventual composition of Tehanu, though that too has a lesser impact.

Rudyard Kipling: Stalky and Co. (1899)

Edition: Wordsworth, 1994
Review number: 882

Few of Kipling's fictional stories contain much of an autobiographical element, despite his frequent use of the first person. In this collection of stories, the school and some of the characters are based on his own experiences; Beetle, in particular, is a self portrait.

The Devon boarding school portrayed in the book is basically a factory for producing future officers of the British army to serve in the colonies, and is by modern standards a violent place, with bullying and savage corporal punishment. Yet Kipling's evident nostalgia for his time at the school infects the reader, who senses the intensity of the friendships and the enjoyment of the experiences, which mainly focus on triumphs over the more petty minded masters. The success of his treatment makes a modern reader quite uncomfortable, especially when he seems to have fond memories of bullying. The way that his schoolboys rebel against authority was controversial at the time, but much less so now. Times have changed.

The reader is also made aware, more deliberately, of a different dark undercurrent. Sprinkled throughout the stories are notes about the future deaths of the boys; they are destined to die young in the service of the British Empire. (One of them, interestingly, is going to be shot by his own men, a less glorified death than the others.) Kipling's point is presumably that the Empire was maintained at a human cost; despite his reputation as a jingoist, this is not the only place where he showed an awareness of this. Few today would deny that there was a human cost, though the focus has canged so that we would think about what it meant to the colonised rather than the coloniser.

Stalky and Co. is one of the most uncomfortable of Kipling's books to read, and this is a measure of the author's talent, as he glories in what is to us unpalatable and almost brings us to feel we appreciate it too.