Original title: The Journal of Researches (one volume of several produced following the voyage)
Published: Everyman, 2003
The eighteenth and nineteenth century saw many voyages of exploration by Europeans, most of which would have been followed by reports and books, ancestors of today's travel memoirs. Most of these voyages have now been forgotten, even the names they gave many places being swept away in our post-colonial world. The books produced are even more forgotten in general: the sort of books you sometimes see in the libraries of English stately homes, and maybe read by academics with related interests. The exception is of course this one (and this does not include the companion volumes with which it was originally published). Its survival is not so much due to its literary qualities, though it is eminently readable, but because of the use Darwin later made of this material; the obvservations made on this voyage, especially on the Galapagos islands, form an important part of the foundations of one of the most famous books of all time, The Origin of Species (also included in this Everyman edition).
The voyage began in December 1831, reaching the Galapagos in September 1835 after spending several years surveying the waters around South America (the principal purpose of the voyage), returning to England a year later; a lengthy circumnavigation of the globe. When the Beagle departed, Darwin was only 22. Without a reputation to uphold, or an academic post which would have made it politic to peddle old orthodoxies, he was a modern, up to date naturalist, surely better able to make use of his observations (and the attention to detail with which he observed should be the envy of many scientists to this day) than a more eminent older man, who would, moreover, have probably been reluctant to spend so many years away from European scientific culture. Darwin was a follower of Lyell, whose Principles of Geology, which had the same sort of revolutionary effect on that science that the principle of natural selection was to have on biology, had started appearing in 1830, the year before the Beagle set sail; he was given a copy of volume one by the Beagle's captain. Lyell attributed the character of the most world's rock formations to forces acting over lengthy period of time rather than to a series of catastrophes in the much more recent past. (Indeed, his book should be at least as stringly anathematised by Creationists as Darwin's own ideas.) Darwin was one of the first scientific observers to take part in such an expedition who was able to bear Lyell's ideas in mind, and he describes how they informed his observations at several places in The Voyage of the Beagle, and a long geological history is essential to the principles of Darwinian evolution. It is clear, too, that the ideas which became known as natural selection were in the air (the introduction to the Origin of Species lists quite a number of precursors) and early thoughts about this, as well as rival theories like Lamarck's, may well have influenced the way that Darwin looked at the plants and animals he saw on the voyage.
The Voyage of the Beagle is not all about the natural world. There are interesting observations on the ways in which people lived in the countries he visited, particularly on the gauchos of Argentina, and a lot of material about the effects of colonisation on native peoples and the institution of slavery. On both these issues Darwin had quite modern views.
In terms of style, Darwin is a clear and writer with fascinating information to impart, though perhaps not as good (and certainly not as amusing) as Gerald Durrell, who must be the current bestselling author of natural history travel books.
In the end, though, the principal interest of The Voyage of the Beagle is its formative role in Darwin's later thought, and this makes it completely unique.
It should be noted that the text here is the second, 1845, edition. There is an interesting foreword to the Everyman edition from Richard Dawkins, which (somewhat predictably, but with a certain amount of justification) he claims evolution to be the greatest scientific idea of all time.
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Jeffrey Deaver: Speaking in Tongues (1995, revised 1999)
Published: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999
This is an early thriller from Jeffrey Deaver, revised four years after the original publication. Like most of his thrillers, it is fairly conventional in its plotting and background. Megan is the daughter of a moderately successful lawyer and his estranged wife; following an incident which suggests a suicide attempt to law enforcement, she is undergoing therapy when she is abducted by a psychopath looking for revenge. Her parents, intended to believe that she ran away, quickly work out that her absence is unlikely to be voluntary - why buy and hide a birthday present for her mother and then disappear before the event? The story follows Tate and Bett's attempts to find Megan, while the kidnapper makes things as difficult for them as possible - framing them for crimes, deceiving those who might otherwise have helped the pair, and so on. Though very early in his career, Deaver is already putting together the convoluted and somewhat unlikely plots which have been his stock in trade.
What lets this novel down, and exposes Deaver's inexperience even after the revision, is the characterisation. It would be easy to fill out some of the less important characters; Deaver concentrates too exclusively on Nate and the kidnapper. His wife, Bett, is sufficiently a cipher that we never learn what kind of "businesswoman" she is - and yet how many people would describe themselves as a businesswoman rather than some more specific and informative title such as "investment consultant"? Even the kidnapper is nothing more than a device for making Tate's life difficult; he is rather unbelievably good at persuading people to believe what he tells them; for example, he persuades Megan's best friend and her family, who have presumably known Megan and Bett for ages if not Tate, that Tate is a child molester - I think if someone came to your door with this story, you'd seek confirmation from someone who might know, not an apparent stranger to the family. Certainly, if Speaking in Tongues could be said to have a moral, it is not to believe what strangers tell you automatically.
Speaking in Tongues is not one of Deaver's most successful novels; for that, look to The Blue Nowhere, or one of the Lincoln Rhyme thrillers (though these also suffer from over-elaborate plotting).
One other thing, a small detail, irritated me about this novel (as someone with a research degree in logic). There is a type of argument known as an enthymeme, which when I encountered it, was called specialisation (the Greek names, which date back to Aristotle, not being considered helpful for mathematicians). This basically takes the form "if all As are Bs, and C is an A, then we can deduce that C is a B". The most famous example is "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.", but Deaver gives a slightly different example: "All cats see in the dark. Midnight is a cat. Therefore Midnight can see in the dark.". He then goes on to say that the classical formulation of the enthymeme is incomplete, because it also needs a line that states "All cats see in the dark, therefore Midnight sees in the dark." Now, this isn't true: what you in fact do is to note that the first two sentences take the form of the premises (parts that are assume to be true) of an enthymeme, and that therefore the enthymeme rule tells you that the conclusion is true; this isn't an extra part of the logic, but the application of a general principle. There is a much better expressed discussion of this point (though based on a different logical principle) in Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach; the problem with requiring a new line of logic is that this starts an infinite process, all in effect identical: you also need to know that "All cats see in the dark, Midnight is a cat, and we know that when all cats see in the dark, then Midnight sees in the dark; therefore Midnight sees in the dark." (You can see why mathematicians find it easier to use symbolic notation!) Now, Deaver also goes on (much later in the novel) to suggest that the conclusion is false: Midnight is blind, so cannot see whether it is dark or not. In fact, the conclusion can only be false if one of the premises (that are assumed to be true) is actually false: either if Midnight is not a cat, or if not all cats can see in the dark (which is the reason why his example fails to be true). It has nothing to do with the general validity of the enthymeme. I suppose it's beside the point for this review (though it's the kind of error that will irritate readers who know more about a particular field than the author of a book, whatever the field happens to be), but the discussion is also beside the point in the novel itself.
This is an early thriller from Jeffrey Deaver, revised four years after the original publication. Like most of his thrillers, it is fairly conventional in its plotting and background. Megan is the daughter of a moderately successful lawyer and his estranged wife; following an incident which suggests a suicide attempt to law enforcement, she is undergoing therapy when she is abducted by a psychopath looking for revenge. Her parents, intended to believe that she ran away, quickly work out that her absence is unlikely to be voluntary - why buy and hide a birthday present for her mother and then disappear before the event? The story follows Tate and Bett's attempts to find Megan, while the kidnapper makes things as difficult for them as possible - framing them for crimes, deceiving those who might otherwise have helped the pair, and so on. Though very early in his career, Deaver is already putting together the convoluted and somewhat unlikely plots which have been his stock in trade.
What lets this novel down, and exposes Deaver's inexperience even after the revision, is the characterisation. It would be easy to fill out some of the less important characters; Deaver concentrates too exclusively on Nate and the kidnapper. His wife, Bett, is sufficiently a cipher that we never learn what kind of "businesswoman" she is - and yet how many people would describe themselves as a businesswoman rather than some more specific and informative title such as "investment consultant"? Even the kidnapper is nothing more than a device for making Tate's life difficult; he is rather unbelievably good at persuading people to believe what he tells them; for example, he persuades Megan's best friend and her family, who have presumably known Megan and Bett for ages if not Tate, that Tate is a child molester - I think if someone came to your door with this story, you'd seek confirmation from someone who might know, not an apparent stranger to the family. Certainly, if Speaking in Tongues could be said to have a moral, it is not to believe what strangers tell you automatically.
Speaking in Tongues is not one of Deaver's most successful novels; for that, look to The Blue Nowhere, or one of the Lincoln Rhyme thrillers (though these also suffer from over-elaborate plotting).
One other thing, a small detail, irritated me about this novel (as someone with a research degree in logic). There is a type of argument known as an enthymeme, which when I encountered it, was called specialisation (the Greek names, which date back to Aristotle, not being considered helpful for mathematicians). This basically takes the form "if all As are Bs, and C is an A, then we can deduce that C is a B". The most famous example is "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.", but Deaver gives a slightly different example: "All cats see in the dark. Midnight is a cat. Therefore Midnight can see in the dark.". He then goes on to say that the classical formulation of the enthymeme is incomplete, because it also needs a line that states "All cats see in the dark, therefore Midnight sees in the dark." Now, this isn't true: what you in fact do is to note that the first two sentences take the form of the premises (parts that are assume to be true) of an enthymeme, and that therefore the enthymeme rule tells you that the conclusion is true; this isn't an extra part of the logic, but the application of a general principle. There is a much better expressed discussion of this point (though based on a different logical principle) in Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach; the problem with requiring a new line of logic is that this starts an infinite process, all in effect identical: you also need to know that "All cats see in the dark, Midnight is a cat, and we know that when all cats see in the dark, then Midnight sees in the dark; therefore Midnight sees in the dark." (You can see why mathematicians find it easier to use symbolic notation!) Now, Deaver also goes on (much later in the novel) to suggest that the conclusion is false: Midnight is blind, so cannot see whether it is dark or not. In fact, the conclusion can only be false if one of the premises (that are assumed to be true) is actually false: either if Midnight is not a cat, or if not all cats can see in the dark (which is the reason why his example fails to be true). It has nothing to do with the general validity of the enthymeme. I suppose it's beside the point for this review (though it's the kind of error that will irritate readers who know more about a particular field than the author of a book, whatever the field happens to be), but the discussion is also beside the point in the novel itself.
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson: Hunters of Dune (2006)
Published: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006
The original Dune is one of my favourite books, as it is for many science fiction readers. (The blurb for this novel claims that it is the bestselling science fiction novel of all time.) Frank Herbert's own sequels, while good, were not in the same class as this classic and, particularly later on, began to introduce elements which diluted the force of Dune itself. So when Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J Anderson began producing novels in the Dune universe, expanding on the detailed background to the story, I never bothered to read them, especially after I read some lukewarm reviews. This novel is a bit different: it is a sequel to Chapterhouse Dune, based on a rediscovered outline by Frank Herbert himself; it will be followed by (at least) two more. This sequel has been something that fans of the series have long wanted to see; Frank Herbert's death made it seem that the loose ends in Chapterhouse Dune would never be cleared up authoritatively.
The novel follows three major points of view, following on from the ending of Chapterhouse Dune. One is that of the community centred round Duncan Idaho, fleeing mysterious hunters in a stolen ship; the second is that of the Bene Gesserits left behind on Chapterhouse led by Duncan's wife, attempting to bring about a union with the Honoured Matres to combat an unknown threat from beyond the worlds of the Old Empire. These two are relatively familiar, involving many already established characters. The third is different, being that of a Tleilaxu geneticist, who has to face the twin blows of the defeat of his people by the Honoured Matres (though he himself was part of a group allied with them) and the discovery that the long time Tleilaxu servants, the Face Dances, have developed into creatures far beyond their original design, with their own purposes at odds with their erstwhile masters. While always present, particularly in the last couple of books, the Tleilaxu have never been as close to centre stage in Frank Herbert's work. They become more important thanks to the discovery of a secret held by the Tleilaxu Masters, which the reader of Chapterhouse Dune knows but the other characters only find out halfway through Hunters of Dune. This is that they have cells preserved from famous people of the distant past which can be used to reincarnate them; these people include the principal characters of Dune itself.
There is not actually very much plot in Hunters of Dune, particularly compared to the labyrinthine twists and turns of Dune (or even, to a lesser extent, most of Frank Herbert's other novels). It is like the middle novel in many fantasy trilogies, there to keep the traditional number of volumes but just describing relatively uneventful activity between the scene setting of the first and the climax of the third. It covers a longer period of time than the other novels, but I feel that everything in this novel could have more effectively treated as backstory for the later resolution of the saga. For example, it doesn't seem to be important to document the details of the attempts to unite the Honoured Matres and the Bene Gesserit, and anything from this story needed for the future plot of the series could be mentioned in passing.
There are problems in this novel which derive from the particular loose ends left in Chapterhouse Dune. It is hard to see just why the characters think that cells from thousands of years in the past are so valuable. I suppose that if someone said they were able to create a clone of Jesus or Mohammed, people would be interested today, and the clones themselves might be made to serve some political purpose. Here, though, the timescales are such that this would be more like resurrecting an Egyptian pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar for their insight into the problems of the Middle East. The Dune universe may be peculiarly static (in the thousands of years that pass during the saga, there are few important technological innovations), but new factions such as the Honoured Matres, and the impossibility of applying the prescience that several of the ancient cloned individuals possess to the majority of the humans alive at this point of the saga make it hard to feel that the contributions the clones could make will be significant. (Obviously the further novels in this conclusion will make a great deal of use of the clones, but it will take a really impressive coup de theatre to convince me that it makes sense.) There are other details which jar as Herbert and Anderson expand on them, which would give things away if I expanded on them.
In the end, the central problem in Hunters of Dune is that the lack of an exciting plot proves a difficulty beyond the abilities of the authors. Since the only interest here turns out to be the way that Frank Herbert tied up the loose ends, I would have preferred just to read his outline as he left it and saved myself the time required to read three or more full length novels. Further novels continuing this story will be ones I skim through, say in the local public library, rather than books I buy for re-reading in the future.
The original Dune is one of my favourite books, as it is for many science fiction readers. (The blurb for this novel claims that it is the bestselling science fiction novel of all time.) Frank Herbert's own sequels, while good, were not in the same class as this classic and, particularly later on, began to introduce elements which diluted the force of Dune itself. So when Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J Anderson began producing novels in the Dune universe, expanding on the detailed background to the story, I never bothered to read them, especially after I read some lukewarm reviews. This novel is a bit different: it is a sequel to Chapterhouse Dune, based on a rediscovered outline by Frank Herbert himself; it will be followed by (at least) two more. This sequel has been something that fans of the series have long wanted to see; Frank Herbert's death made it seem that the loose ends in Chapterhouse Dune would never be cleared up authoritatively.
The novel follows three major points of view, following on from the ending of Chapterhouse Dune. One is that of the community centred round Duncan Idaho, fleeing mysterious hunters in a stolen ship; the second is that of the Bene Gesserits left behind on Chapterhouse led by Duncan's wife, attempting to bring about a union with the Honoured Matres to combat an unknown threat from beyond the worlds of the Old Empire. These two are relatively familiar, involving many already established characters. The third is different, being that of a Tleilaxu geneticist, who has to face the twin blows of the defeat of his people by the Honoured Matres (though he himself was part of a group allied with them) and the discovery that the long time Tleilaxu servants, the Face Dances, have developed into creatures far beyond their original design, with their own purposes at odds with their erstwhile masters. While always present, particularly in the last couple of books, the Tleilaxu have never been as close to centre stage in Frank Herbert's work. They become more important thanks to the discovery of a secret held by the Tleilaxu Masters, which the reader of Chapterhouse Dune knows but the other characters only find out halfway through Hunters of Dune. This is that they have cells preserved from famous people of the distant past which can be used to reincarnate them; these people include the principal characters of Dune itself.
There is not actually very much plot in Hunters of Dune, particularly compared to the labyrinthine twists and turns of Dune (or even, to a lesser extent, most of Frank Herbert's other novels). It is like the middle novel in many fantasy trilogies, there to keep the traditional number of volumes but just describing relatively uneventful activity between the scene setting of the first and the climax of the third. It covers a longer period of time than the other novels, but I feel that everything in this novel could have more effectively treated as backstory for the later resolution of the saga. For example, it doesn't seem to be important to document the details of the attempts to unite the Honoured Matres and the Bene Gesserit, and anything from this story needed for the future plot of the series could be mentioned in passing.
There are problems in this novel which derive from the particular loose ends left in Chapterhouse Dune. It is hard to see just why the characters think that cells from thousands of years in the past are so valuable. I suppose that if someone said they were able to create a clone of Jesus or Mohammed, people would be interested today, and the clones themselves might be made to serve some political purpose. Here, though, the timescales are such that this would be more like resurrecting an Egyptian pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar for their insight into the problems of the Middle East. The Dune universe may be peculiarly static (in the thousands of years that pass during the saga, there are few important technological innovations), but new factions such as the Honoured Matres, and the impossibility of applying the prescience that several of the ancient cloned individuals possess to the majority of the humans alive at this point of the saga make it hard to feel that the contributions the clones could make will be significant. (Obviously the further novels in this conclusion will make a great deal of use of the clones, but it will take a really impressive coup de theatre to convince me that it makes sense.) There are other details which jar as Herbert and Anderson expand on them, which would give things away if I expanded on them.
In the end, the central problem in Hunters of Dune is that the lack of an exciting plot proves a difficulty beyond the abilities of the authors. Since the only interest here turns out to be the way that Frank Herbert tied up the loose ends, I would have preferred just to read his outline as he left it and saved myself the time required to read three or more full length novels. Further novels continuing this story will be ones I skim through, say in the local public library, rather than books I buy for re-reading in the future.
Friday, 2 February 2007
Barry Day: This Wooden 'O': Shakespeare's Globe Reborn (1996)
Published: Oberon, 1996
The story of how the Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare's most famous plays were first staged, was reconstructed in London near its original site is a fascinating one. From the dream first taking hold of American actor Sam Wanamaker to the completion of the project in the mid 1990s took around fifty years, meanly because of the disorganised nature of Wanamaker's enthusiasms combined with reluctance by the British establishment to take an American seriously - the assumption was that he wanted to create a downmarket Shakespearean Disneyland - and bad timing. The scheme came up against indifference to the heritage at the start, fears that it would be a distraction from plans to build a national theatre in the middle, the difficulty of fund-raising for a project which had nothing yet to see (especially as the plans kept on getting bigger with nothing tangible appearing), and the politics of developers and one of London's more extreme left wing councils throughout (leading to a massive lawsuit in the eighties).
Perhaps it would be better to say that the story "should be" rather than "is" fascinating. Despite the ringing endorsements, Day's telling of the tale is uninvolving, confusing, and riddled with irritating clichés and stylistic quirks. The illustrations exemplify the problems of the book: it is about a building project, but there are no pictures of the spectacular finished object. (Though to be fair, the book was written and published to be ready as a souvenir when the opening took place - but there are not even pictures of architects' models of the final design.) The first of these issues, that the narrative is uninvolving, stems to a large extent from the other two. Though we are told that Wanamaker was enthusiastic about the idea of reconstructing the Globe, it is never made clear to the reader just why they should share this enthusiasm. It is perhaps a difficult thing to convey in such a book - I became a convert to the idea through the revelatory experience that it can be to attend a performance in the theatre as a groundling in the pit. Generally, I seem to remember performances without much sense of their location: the interior of one West End theatre is, to the playgoer, much like any other. But at the Globe, particularly if you have a groundling ticket, the venue is inextricably and uniquely part of the performance.
The confusion in the story is due to the way that it has been structured. The individual chapters seem to take the history forwards, only for the next to leap backwards, and frequently go over some of the same events again. The narrative is also full of forward references, for example (one of many), "The Battle for the soul of the Rose Theatre was foreshadowed eighteen years in advance" (chapter 2, capitalisation Day's) is relating what is being discussed to something else that isn't described for another ten chapters, and is an unhelpful reference except to someone who already knows everything in This Wooden 'O' - who would not be in the intended audience. I did at times wonder if the book had been written as three or four separate long essays, which were then chopped up to make This Wooden 'O': one on London's Elizabethan theatres (which is very similar to the information found in the Everyman Companion to Shakespeare - had nothing new been discovered in the intervening twenty years?), one an obituary of Sam Wanamaker, one a description of the ideas of theatre historians about the layout of the Globe, and so on, but I have the feeling that even when re-ordered thematically like this the book would still be chronologically confusing. Much seems to be left out, too; aspects of the story that must have happened are glossed over. We learn, for example, of Mark Rylance's appointment as artistic director of the Globe from a caption to a picture, not from the text even though that quotes his ideas about the function of the reconstructed theatre at length.
Also confusing are contradictory pictures of Sam Wanamaker presented in This Wooden 'O'. The clichéd words "amiable eccentric" are used at one point, but Day gives little evidence in the rest of this book of his amiability. From Day's descriptions of Wanamaker's efforts to bring his vision to fruition, "complex, irascible, obsessed, disorganised eccentric" would appear to be more accurate; "amiable" seems to be an adjective used simply because eccentrics are frequently described this way.
The most irritating aspect of This Wooden 'O' is Day's writing style. The text is full of clichés of many kinds, so much so in places that it seems to be a parody of tabloid journalism. It becomes very wearing to read at the length of an entire book. The narrative flow keeps being strained to bring in some quotation or other, usually from Shakespeare; restricting their use to one per chapter - or even one per page - would help enormously with the book's readability. Some quotations should be even more restricted: how many times can the project really have experienced "the best of times, the worst of times"? Every second or third paragraph ends with an ellipsis, which appears to be Day's idea of how to signpost a remark he considers amusing: that is not the function of this punctuation!
This is a story that needed to be written, but it has been done here so poorly that this cannot be considered a definitive account.
The story of how the Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare's most famous plays were first staged, was reconstructed in London near its original site is a fascinating one. From the dream first taking hold of American actor Sam Wanamaker to the completion of the project in the mid 1990s took around fifty years, meanly because of the disorganised nature of Wanamaker's enthusiasms combined with reluctance by the British establishment to take an American seriously - the assumption was that he wanted to create a downmarket Shakespearean Disneyland - and bad timing. The scheme came up against indifference to the heritage at the start, fears that it would be a distraction from plans to build a national theatre in the middle, the difficulty of fund-raising for a project which had nothing yet to see (especially as the plans kept on getting bigger with nothing tangible appearing), and the politics of developers and one of London's more extreme left wing councils throughout (leading to a massive lawsuit in the eighties).
Perhaps it would be better to say that the story "should be" rather than "is" fascinating. Despite the ringing endorsements, Day's telling of the tale is uninvolving, confusing, and riddled with irritating clichés and stylistic quirks. The illustrations exemplify the problems of the book: it is about a building project, but there are no pictures of the spectacular finished object. (Though to be fair, the book was written and published to be ready as a souvenir when the opening took place - but there are not even pictures of architects' models of the final design.) The first of these issues, that the narrative is uninvolving, stems to a large extent from the other two. Though we are told that Wanamaker was enthusiastic about the idea of reconstructing the Globe, it is never made clear to the reader just why they should share this enthusiasm. It is perhaps a difficult thing to convey in such a book - I became a convert to the idea through the revelatory experience that it can be to attend a performance in the theatre as a groundling in the pit. Generally, I seem to remember performances without much sense of their location: the interior of one West End theatre is, to the playgoer, much like any other. But at the Globe, particularly if you have a groundling ticket, the venue is inextricably and uniquely part of the performance.
The confusion in the story is due to the way that it has been structured. The individual chapters seem to take the history forwards, only for the next to leap backwards, and frequently go over some of the same events again. The narrative is also full of forward references, for example (one of many), "The Battle for the soul of the Rose Theatre was foreshadowed eighteen years in advance" (chapter 2, capitalisation Day's) is relating what is being discussed to something else that isn't described for another ten chapters, and is an unhelpful reference except to someone who already knows everything in This Wooden 'O' - who would not be in the intended audience. I did at times wonder if the book had been written as three or four separate long essays, which were then chopped up to make This Wooden 'O': one on London's Elizabethan theatres (which is very similar to the information found in the Everyman Companion to Shakespeare - had nothing new been discovered in the intervening twenty years?), one an obituary of Sam Wanamaker, one a description of the ideas of theatre historians about the layout of the Globe, and so on, but I have the feeling that even when re-ordered thematically like this the book would still be chronologically confusing. Much seems to be left out, too; aspects of the story that must have happened are glossed over. We learn, for example, of Mark Rylance's appointment as artistic director of the Globe from a caption to a picture, not from the text even though that quotes his ideas about the function of the reconstructed theatre at length.
Also confusing are contradictory pictures of Sam Wanamaker presented in This Wooden 'O'. The clichéd words "amiable eccentric" are used at one point, but Day gives little evidence in the rest of this book of his amiability. From Day's descriptions of Wanamaker's efforts to bring his vision to fruition, "complex, irascible, obsessed, disorganised eccentric" would appear to be more accurate; "amiable" seems to be an adjective used simply because eccentrics are frequently described this way.
The most irritating aspect of This Wooden 'O' is Day's writing style. The text is full of clichés of many kinds, so much so in places that it seems to be a parody of tabloid journalism. It becomes very wearing to read at the length of an entire book. The narrative flow keeps being strained to bring in some quotation or other, usually from Shakespeare; restricting their use to one per chapter - or even one per page - would help enormously with the book's readability. Some quotations should be even more restricted: how many times can the project really have experienced "the best of times, the worst of times"? Every second or third paragraph ends with an ellipsis, which appears to be Day's idea of how to signpost a remark he considers amusing: that is not the function of this punctuation!
This is a story that needed to be written, but it has been done here so poorly that this cannot be considered a definitive account.
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
Michael Innes: From London Far (1946)
Published: Penguin 1962
For forty years or so, the serious (but now more or less forgotten) novelist and academic J.I.M. Stewart produced popular thrillers under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Most of these are crime novels featuring upper class policeman John Appleby; this one is not one of them. It tells of the accidential discovery of a missive art smuggling operation taking advantage of the devastation of Europe during the Second World War. Richard Meredith, an academic, is thinking about poetry while selecting a purchase in a London tobacconist, and absently murmurs "London, a poem": words taken by the shopkeeper to be the smugglers' password; the shop itself covers the entrance to an underground warehouse storing an incredible collection of art. There, Meredith, instead of going to the police, pretends to be a gang member, kills a man, escapes with a kidnapped young woman, and follows the trail to a bizarre Scottish castle with associated guano mining operation.
From London Far is, like most of those Stewart published as Michael Innes, a whimsical novel - in this case too much so for its own good. The plot is full of absurdities, and is obviously intended to be a parody of those early twentieth century adventure stories where an ordinary person (who just happens to be resourceful enough to be a hero) discovers a plot through a contrived coincidence. Most of these books can be seen as imitators of John Buchan, whose Richard Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps is perhaps the best known example of such a hero. The satire starts from Meredith being a scholar of classical literature rather than fullback of the Scottish Rugby team or a South African diamond prospector visiting England. There is obviously a place for such a parody, but the novel goes on to be filled with many more absurdities which are irritating rather than humorous. In Scotland, for example, Meredith is able to play an almost identical trick on the group of smugglers there to the impersonation he carried out in London, something that seems most unlikely after the invention of the telephone. Too much of what is going on is obscured from the reader for too much of the novel, making much of the action seem unmotivated, and the allusive nature of Innes' style makes From London Far a big effort to read: not a good trait for a thriller.
There are detective stories with whimsical humour and academic detectives which work well. The Gervase Fen stories of Edmund Crispin, contemporary with Innes, are excellent, for example, and Innes' Appleby novels are generally better as long as he doesn't let himself get carried away. (Operation Pax is good, and the level of the whimsical in that novel is about that of the average episode of the Avengers, which should give some idea of just how fantastical From London Far actually gets.) I suspect that J.I.M. Stewart would be surprised that his pseudonymous works have lasted longer than the novels he publised under his own name (our local library stocks about a dozen of the one, and none of the other, suggesting that this is the case), and in this instance I would agree that From London Far is too out of date to be far from oblivion.
For forty years or so, the serious (but now more or less forgotten) novelist and academic J.I.M. Stewart produced popular thrillers under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Most of these are crime novels featuring upper class policeman John Appleby; this one is not one of them. It tells of the accidential discovery of a missive art smuggling operation taking advantage of the devastation of Europe during the Second World War. Richard Meredith, an academic, is thinking about poetry while selecting a purchase in a London tobacconist, and absently murmurs "London, a poem": words taken by the shopkeeper to be the smugglers' password; the shop itself covers the entrance to an underground warehouse storing an incredible collection of art. There, Meredith, instead of going to the police, pretends to be a gang member, kills a man, escapes with a kidnapped young woman, and follows the trail to a bizarre Scottish castle with associated guano mining operation.
From London Far is, like most of those Stewart published as Michael Innes, a whimsical novel - in this case too much so for its own good. The plot is full of absurdities, and is obviously intended to be a parody of those early twentieth century adventure stories where an ordinary person (who just happens to be resourceful enough to be a hero) discovers a plot through a contrived coincidence. Most of these books can be seen as imitators of John Buchan, whose Richard Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps is perhaps the best known example of such a hero. The satire starts from Meredith being a scholar of classical literature rather than fullback of the Scottish Rugby team or a South African diamond prospector visiting England. There is obviously a place for such a parody, but the novel goes on to be filled with many more absurdities which are irritating rather than humorous. In Scotland, for example, Meredith is able to play an almost identical trick on the group of smugglers there to the impersonation he carried out in London, something that seems most unlikely after the invention of the telephone. Too much of what is going on is obscured from the reader for too much of the novel, making much of the action seem unmotivated, and the allusive nature of Innes' style makes From London Far a big effort to read: not a good trait for a thriller.
There are detective stories with whimsical humour and academic detectives which work well. The Gervase Fen stories of Edmund Crispin, contemporary with Innes, are excellent, for example, and Innes' Appleby novels are generally better as long as he doesn't let himself get carried away. (Operation Pax is good, and the level of the whimsical in that novel is about that of the average episode of the Avengers, which should give some idea of just how fantastical From London Far actually gets.) I suspect that J.I.M. Stewart would be surprised that his pseudonymous works have lasted longer than the novels he publised under his own name (our local library stocks about a dozen of the one, and none of the other, suggesting that this is the case), and in this instance I would agree that From London Far is too out of date to be far from oblivion.
Saturday, 20 January 2007
Sylvia Brownrigg: The Delivery Room (2006)
Published: Picador, 2006
Sylvia Brownrigg's third novel is her darkest so far. Its main themes are given by three different symbolic or real life associations prompted by the title: birth, psychiatric therapy, and death. The main character is a Serbian psychotherapist named Mira, who faces additional worries apart from those connected to her pations (many of whom are women with problems connected, either literally or figuratively, to childbirth). Though living and working in London for decades with her English husband, she worries about her family in the midst of fighting in former Yugoslavia (The Delivery Room being set about a decade ago), about her relationship with her stepson and his wife, and about the way that "Serbian" is turning into a dirty word, as a name associated with the atrocities of ethnic cleansing. The word "delivery" is also used by NATO to describe the airstrikes on Kosovo which occur midway through the novel.
The first part sets the scene and introduces the characters. (The patients seemed to me slightly too connected to each other and to Mira's family for versimilitude, but this flaw was not too off-putting.) but with the second part, bad news turns the novel onto its bleaker path. Mira's husband is diagnised with cancer, which becomes the centre of the rest of the novel as it dominates her emotional life. This is not a novel to read if you find such topics distressing to read about. I'm not sure that the introduction of something so serious works; it possibly overbalances a novel that has already tried to bring in so many themes under the general heading of delivery. It would be just as overpowering and central in real life, it is true, but in a novel it comes over as heavy handed and less realistic, paradoxically. It lacks the lighter touch which helped The Metaphysical Touch, which deals with the equally downbeat issue of suicide, to be more successful. Reading The Delivery Room, I was surprised when a comparison occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before: that Sylvia Brownrigg's style is similar to that of Carol Shields, another writer whose work I generally enjoy. Shields is generally less dark and more domestic, but the issues Mira has with her stepson and vice versa could well appear in one of Shields' novels. This thought may well be due to re-reading The Republic of Love just before starting on The Delivery Room, but I think it is valid. Both of them have gentle styles, and their novels are not only character based, but they also share a knack of bringing characters to life quickly. Brownigg is perhaps not yet as good - and this novel seems to me to be something of a retrograde step - but she could easily rival the Canadian author with a little more experience.
Sylvia Brownrigg's third novel is her darkest so far. Its main themes are given by three different symbolic or real life associations prompted by the title: birth, psychiatric therapy, and death. The main character is a Serbian psychotherapist named Mira, who faces additional worries apart from those connected to her pations (many of whom are women with problems connected, either literally or figuratively, to childbirth). Though living and working in London for decades with her English husband, she worries about her family in the midst of fighting in former Yugoslavia (The Delivery Room being set about a decade ago), about her relationship with her stepson and his wife, and about the way that "Serbian" is turning into a dirty word, as a name associated with the atrocities of ethnic cleansing. The word "delivery" is also used by NATO to describe the airstrikes on Kosovo which occur midway through the novel.
The first part sets the scene and introduces the characters. (The patients seemed to me slightly too connected to each other and to Mira's family for versimilitude, but this flaw was not too off-putting.) but with the second part, bad news turns the novel onto its bleaker path. Mira's husband is diagnised with cancer, which becomes the centre of the rest of the novel as it dominates her emotional life. This is not a novel to read if you find such topics distressing to read about. I'm not sure that the introduction of something so serious works; it possibly overbalances a novel that has already tried to bring in so many themes under the general heading of delivery. It would be just as overpowering and central in real life, it is true, but in a novel it comes over as heavy handed and less realistic, paradoxically. It lacks the lighter touch which helped The Metaphysical Touch, which deals with the equally downbeat issue of suicide, to be more successful. Reading The Delivery Room, I was surprised when a comparison occurred to me that I hadn't thought of before: that Sylvia Brownrigg's style is similar to that of Carol Shields, another writer whose work I generally enjoy. Shields is generally less dark and more domestic, but the issues Mira has with her stepson and vice versa could well appear in one of Shields' novels. This thought may well be due to re-reading The Republic of Love just before starting on The Delivery Room, but I think it is valid. Both of them have gentle styles, and their novels are not only character based, but they also share a knack of bringing characters to life quickly. Brownigg is perhaps not yet as good - and this novel seems to me to be something of a retrograde step - but she could easily rival the Canadian author with a little more experience.
Thursday, 4 January 2007
Sergei Lukyanenko: The Night Watch (1998)
Published: William Heinemann, 2006
Translated: Andrew Bromfield, 2006
There seem to be a lot of good vampire novels around at the moment. Soon after The Historian, I was able to pick up The Night Watch in my local library. Strictly speaking, this Russian publishing sensation has been available for almost a decade, but despite huge sales in Lukyanenko's home country, it is only in 2006 that an English translation has appeared. That one has now come out is something of a guarantee of quality, as very few modern novels seem to be translated into English each year. The cultural dominance of the English language is such that bookshops all over the world are full of translations from English: perhaps only in the Middle East and China will this not be the case. Clearly, though, English speakers seem not to be too keen on translations, which makes the quality of the rare exceptions such as Lukyanenko or Henning Mankell even more obvious.
This is the first novel in a quartet of novels (the final volume was published in 2006, and so the blurb for The Night Watch describes itself as part of trilogy). The story, divided into three parts with fairly separate adventures (so that The Night Watch is effectively a trilogy itself), concerns Anton, a systems engineer who has discovered that he is an Other, a human who can sense and use the magic of the shadowy world which underpins our own and which is known as the Twilight. He is a junior member of the Night Watch, the body set up by the Light to watch over the Dark Ones, to ensure that the fragile equilibrium in the Cold War between Light and Dark is not broken. A similar body, the Day Watch (also the title of the second book) maintains the equilibrium from the other side. At the beginning of first part Destiny, Anton is sent on a mission (a mistake, he feels, for he is not a field agent): he is to find and stop a vampire who is killing people - something forbidden by the Treaty. While on his way, he tries to help a young woman he meets by chance on the Moscow subway who is under a curse (he can see it as a black cloud hanging over her head), and by doing so precipitates something very much bigger than his original task.
The Cold War analogy is really very apt: The Night Watch is very like a John le Carré spy novel, full of people doing questionable things for a cause they more or less believe is right, where the equilibrium itself becomse more important than morality. This cynical view of the world is particularly easy for the characters in Lukyanenko's novel to fall into, because the two sides (like communism and capitalism) do not simply equate to good and evil. Instead, they embody the acceptance of the duty to help others as opposed to the need for freedom, including the freedom to be selfish. The Night Watch is a spy thriller with supernatural trimmings, and it is very well done indeed. The issue, whether it is right or necessary for individuals to act against the ideals governing their society in order to protect that society is very much alive in these days of illegal wiretapping, of CCTV cameras on every corner, where there is less and less privacy from government to protect us from the threat of terrorism. (It is an issue that is, for example, at the heart of most episodes of fashionable TV drama Spooks.) What makes this novel feel as though it is looking back to John le Carré and Len Deighton is the way that each mission that Anton is sent on is hiding bigger, complex and underhand schemes: he is never told the real point of what he is doing. (A sure recipe for inducing paranoia and cynicism.) The stories are given depth through these multiple layers, like an onion. The characters here are also like Len Deighton's: you can measure how long someone has been a member of the Night Watch by their cynicism.
The Night Watch has been talked about for ages among fantasy fans: now it is available in English, and definitely lives up to expectation.
Translated: Andrew Bromfield, 2006
There seem to be a lot of good vampire novels around at the moment. Soon after The Historian, I was able to pick up The Night Watch in my local library. Strictly speaking, this Russian publishing sensation has been available for almost a decade, but despite huge sales in Lukyanenko's home country, it is only in 2006 that an English translation has appeared. That one has now come out is something of a guarantee of quality, as very few modern novels seem to be translated into English each year. The cultural dominance of the English language is such that bookshops all over the world are full of translations from English: perhaps only in the Middle East and China will this not be the case. Clearly, though, English speakers seem not to be too keen on translations, which makes the quality of the rare exceptions such as Lukyanenko or Henning Mankell even more obvious.
This is the first novel in a quartet of novels (the final volume was published in 2006, and so the blurb for The Night Watch describes itself as part of trilogy). The story, divided into three parts with fairly separate adventures (so that The Night Watch is effectively a trilogy itself), concerns Anton, a systems engineer who has discovered that he is an Other, a human who can sense and use the magic of the shadowy world which underpins our own and which is known as the Twilight. He is a junior member of the Night Watch, the body set up by the Light to watch over the Dark Ones, to ensure that the fragile equilibrium in the Cold War between Light and Dark is not broken. A similar body, the Day Watch (also the title of the second book) maintains the equilibrium from the other side. At the beginning of first part Destiny, Anton is sent on a mission (a mistake, he feels, for he is not a field agent): he is to find and stop a vampire who is killing people - something forbidden by the Treaty. While on his way, he tries to help a young woman he meets by chance on the Moscow subway who is under a curse (he can see it as a black cloud hanging over her head), and by doing so precipitates something very much bigger than his original task.
The Cold War analogy is really very apt: The Night Watch is very like a John le Carré spy novel, full of people doing questionable things for a cause they more or less believe is right, where the equilibrium itself becomse more important than morality. This cynical view of the world is particularly easy for the characters in Lukyanenko's novel to fall into, because the two sides (like communism and capitalism) do not simply equate to good and evil. Instead, they embody the acceptance of the duty to help others as opposed to the need for freedom, including the freedom to be selfish. The Night Watch is a spy thriller with supernatural trimmings, and it is very well done indeed. The issue, whether it is right or necessary for individuals to act against the ideals governing their society in order to protect that society is very much alive in these days of illegal wiretapping, of CCTV cameras on every corner, where there is less and less privacy from government to protect us from the threat of terrorism. (It is an issue that is, for example, at the heart of most episodes of fashionable TV drama Spooks.) What makes this novel feel as though it is looking back to John le Carré and Len Deighton is the way that each mission that Anton is sent on is hiding bigger, complex and underhand schemes: he is never told the real point of what he is doing. (A sure recipe for inducing paranoia and cynicism.) The stories are given depth through these multiple layers, like an onion. The characters here are also like Len Deighton's: you can measure how long someone has been a member of the Night Watch by their cynicism.
The Night Watch has been talked about for ages among fantasy fans: now it is available in English, and definitely lives up to expectation.
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