Faulks' style is never content to remain stuck in a single person's perspective for too long, and he is certainly right to do so. War is a strange thing in that a person can walk through the exact same events and have an entirely different perspective.
My self-critical brain stands up and says, "Yeah, but you can say that about life in general." You could say that, but it seems to me to be even more true when we talk about soldiers in war. The effect is amped up like colors under blacklight. That may actually be a more apt metaphor than I realize. There is a concept in art that states that the viewer of any artistic piece brings all the psychological pieces of themselves to bear onto the piece. When someone views, reads, or listens to a piece of art it acts as a sort of mirror so that the person isn't seeing the thing objectively. They bring a massive amount of subjectivity independent of any creator's intention. War, from what I've read, turns this (and everything in a human being) up to 11.
The second episode of the seven opens with a new character, Jack Firebrace. He's a miner from back in England who joined up to dig tunnels from the English trenches into German territory. From there they set a mine to punch a hole inside enemy territory. The difficulties for Jack are to numerous to mention. Each hole is only three feet wide, timbers that hold up the walls falter, explosions overhead destroy the structural integrity of the tunnel, and, as we discover in the opening scene, the ever present danger of discovery by German tunnelers coming from the other direction.
I've never in my reading experience had someone such write in such a way that I experienced full on claustrophobia in the middle of a quite open room. Throughout the entire second part of the novel Faulks does a truly admirable job of making you feel like as if you are actually there, in a situation in a part of the world and a time that you never could have experienced on your own. All great writing does this and Faulks is as much a master as Tolkien in world building.
As the perspective shifts between Jack and Stephen in the days leading up to the climatic big push you watch people come apart in vastly different ways including our protagonists. Jack is dealing with issues from his wife and sickly son back home by throwing himself into his mining. Helplessness can be ignored when you have something to do with your hands. Stephen is given a group of men to command and begins to suspect that they are being led as lambs to the slaughter despite the reassurances of his superiors. Stephen clearly uses the war to give his life some sort of meaning since Isabelle left him with their baby still in her womb, and how he deals with that comes out in some surprising ways, one of which I'll get to soon.
The thing that sets this book apart is, of course, the details. It's abundantly clear that Faulks had to do massive amounts of research including getting ahold of all the veterans from the war still alive. There are so many things in this novel that he couldn't make up or simply intuit. As someone who is addicted to trivia, it was a dream to find glorious tidbits on every page that both illumined and horrified me. As a general pacifist unwilling to mobilize and authorize the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men for a cause other than defense of our own country, it did the incredible job of both affirming and challenging my position.
This is where "Birdsong" far excels as a war novel up against "Catch-22". I was disgusted with "Catch-22" and may have even referred to it as an "abortion of a novel" so filled with nihilism and self congratulatory cleverness that swung at the load bearing pillars of virtue and nobility, laughing maniacally as the structure collapses on itself and wondering why nothing magically sprung up to take its place. While "Catch-22" deals with many of the same issues but paints them as a pointless farce. In "Birdsong" the characters actually struggle with the horrors of war and virtue. There is a tension there that simply can't exist in "Catch-22". This is specifically highlighted in the way each deals with prostitution that the soldiers use to "comfort" themselves.
In "Catch-22" the main characters engage the prostitutes mechanically, looking at them with efficient pragmatism. When one soldier beats a prostitute the other characters concern and reason for stopping him and trying to smoothe things over is only so that they will be allowed back. They take care of the problem with money, chocolates, and silk hosiery. The women have as much function as an ATM further highlighting the pointlessness of existence and general ennui that is prevalent in much post-modernist writing.
In "Birdsong", Stephen knows that his company and the company of one of his fellow men of rank, Weir, is going to make the push and in all likelihood be fodder for the German guns. It's so sure that when he looks through a pair of binoculars at the enemy position there is even a sign that says "Welcome, 29th British Infantry!" hanging over the German artillery position. Stephen has known for some time that Weir was still a virgin and he decides that this is a travesty that he can rectify before they certainly die.
Wier protests once he realizes what Stephen is up to but relents once he is shoved into the whorehouse. Stephen is all big talk, but his heart seems to be in the "right" place. He thinks back to Isabelle and how the union with feminine flesh illuminated his life. He can't imagine existence without having tasted that at least once. Certainly it burned him, and crippled him in some ways, but to him it was light and nourishing light at that. Weir lets out a bellow of rage and kicks open the door blaming Stephen for what happened. Stephen freaks out, wondering what Weir has done but comes to find out that the rage was only due to the fact that his friend couldn't bring himself do what Stephen expected. The prostitute laughs and offers Stephen to take Weirs place. He did pay for it after all. Stephen ascents as long as its with a younger prostitute. Once she touches Stephen his whole world shifts and he sees the darkness, the perversion of the situation. It's not the warm, loving touch of Isabelle that he assumed was common to all woman. He's disgusted as he wrestles with his conscience and makes a fumbling but polite exit.
That is ultimately what sets it apart; the struggle with conscience, the endurance of virtue in the darkest of circumstances, the seeing through of duty even when certain death is before you. Those elements are often found in the most enduring stories of heroes. The difference between the two is similar to the difference between Loki and Thor. We can do without worshiping the cowardly trickster as a species. We cannot do without tales of self sacrifice for the greater good, the denial of self for the others, or the wrestling with virtue because it is right.
Naturally, and I half-expect this, the novel could take a terrible turn any minute now. We are moving from the front line at Amiens and going to 1978 in the next part. We shall see how that goes.
Pax,
W
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Friday, April 6, 2018
Settling Accounts (Rebecca to Birdsong)
As per my usual blogging style I find that it's been a year since I last entered anything here. I'm appalled by my behavior on that count AND by the fact that I didn't lay a finish to the novel, "Rebecca". I am apparently confoundedly thick. I'm not sure where my copy is and as such I can't excerpt it like I like...BUT I will review it.
"Rebecca" is one of the single best suspense novels I have ever read in my life. Unlike...some...it absolutely deserves its place on this list of 100 Books. Mdme. Du Maurier is far and away one of the best writers I have encountered in ages. She can take an otherwise beautiful scene and inject just the right amount of tension that makes you think there is something wrong. By the same hand she deftly gives you reason to believe that everything actually is fine, you're just making something out of nothing. Her sense of character and setting is so good it's ridiculous. There is no character that is not believable. Even the secondary villain of the novel, Mrs. Danvers, is quite believable. You do not walk away thinking, "Oh, that could never happen." Instead you wonder how often this sort of thing actually does happen.
When we come to the end and the massive reveal, when the truth comes out, it is more ugly and sinister than you imagine. At the same time, though, you feel as if you suspected it the entire time. When the true villain is revealed (and just who that is happens to be up for debate) you actually understand the actions taken. They are entirely logical. Now, it is up to the reader to decide if that's a comfort or not.
The fallout at Manderlay is complete. No one gets out of it unharmed, and Du Maurier leaves it all hanging there making you wonder what will go on, what lays beyond the final dot on the last page. Normally that sort of thing annoys me; often it's used in a manner that tries to show the world how clever the author is. Not so here. To put a bow on it would detract from what the characters and yourself had just experience. Life rarely has a tidy bow on it at any point, and all the feelings, thoughts, and emotions continue to wreck havoc on the couple beyond and probably into their last days.
Short version: It's a novel I'm proud to have on my shelf...as opposed to, say, "Catch-22".
I bring up "Catch-22" and I'll be bringing it up again soon because it is the first novel of any war that I'd read on this list. Now I have "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks to compare it too.
I won't go too much into "Catch-22" except to say it was a pointless novel about the pointlessness of war and the pointlessness of everything. Nihilistic to its core it even went so far, to me, as to not even be able to justify its existence. "Birdsong", on the other hand, blimey what a book.
The reason I hadn't gone back to it, and thereby back to this blog, was due to the first part of the book. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of judging it by the first 99 pages.
"Birdsong" opens up from the perspective of Stephen, a young man somehow attached to the British military, who has come to live at the home of the Azaires. Rene, the husband, teaches Stephen about the French textile industry. Isabelle is the second wife of Rene and takes care of his children. It doesn't take long for romantic tension to build up between Stephen and Isabelle and I proceeded to gag.
I like a love story. I have an almost feminine love for love stories. Watching a couple go through the BS of life trying to find each other, and then overcoming insurmountable odds to end up together and hand in hand bravely face down the rest of their lives... Honestly there probably isn't a better, more hopeful thing someone can write about. BUT...This whole "oh dash it all, Penbrooke, I'm married to another...whatever shall we do...Oh, I can't...but, oh, I want to" back and forth tripe is ridiculous. When the obstacles to a romance are marriage, that's when I check out.
It's not love. It's hormones. I know, the post-modernists would rise up and say, "But all love is just hormones!" to which vehemently respond that just because that is the entirety of your limited experience, that doesn't necessarily make it so. There is out there significant love; true, faithful, sure, enduring, selfless love. I know because I experience that every day. Infidelity, even when it's dressed up as polyamory, or an "open marriage" is the exact opposite. It is false, unfaithful, unsolid, fleeting, selfish lust. There is nothing noble in it whatsoever; nothing that pushes the human narrative towards the light, and I reject it as a narrative device wholeheartedly.
Except...
Except when it is not glorifying it. When it shows, and rightly so, how destructive and gutting it truly is.
When we arrive at the end of the first part of the novel (which is broken up into 7 episodes or acts) we see just that. The farce is laid bare, the hopes are dashed, and the child they created between the two of them returns to her husband. Stephen watches both the woman he "loves" and the child she is carrying walk out the door with only a cowardly note left behind.
I don't root for a cheating couple. I can't. I won't. Yes, her husband punishes her with a belt. He's a brute and a terrible man. I agree. But infidelity is not a cure for anything.
The second of the 7 episodes begins with Stephen on the front lines of World War I. And I'll properly write that episode up next time.
Pax,
W
"Rebecca" is one of the single best suspense novels I have ever read in my life. Unlike...some...it absolutely deserves its place on this list of 100 Books. Mdme. Du Maurier is far and away one of the best writers I have encountered in ages. She can take an otherwise beautiful scene and inject just the right amount of tension that makes you think there is something wrong. By the same hand she deftly gives you reason to believe that everything actually is fine, you're just making something out of nothing. Her sense of character and setting is so good it's ridiculous. There is no character that is not believable. Even the secondary villain of the novel, Mrs. Danvers, is quite believable. You do not walk away thinking, "Oh, that could never happen." Instead you wonder how often this sort of thing actually does happen.
When we come to the end and the massive reveal, when the truth comes out, it is more ugly and sinister than you imagine. At the same time, though, you feel as if you suspected it the entire time. When the true villain is revealed (and just who that is happens to be up for debate) you actually understand the actions taken. They are entirely logical. Now, it is up to the reader to decide if that's a comfort or not.
The fallout at Manderlay is complete. No one gets out of it unharmed, and Du Maurier leaves it all hanging there making you wonder what will go on, what lays beyond the final dot on the last page. Normally that sort of thing annoys me; often it's used in a manner that tries to show the world how clever the author is. Not so here. To put a bow on it would detract from what the characters and yourself had just experience. Life rarely has a tidy bow on it at any point, and all the feelings, thoughts, and emotions continue to wreck havoc on the couple beyond and probably into their last days.
Short version: It's a novel I'm proud to have on my shelf...as opposed to, say, "Catch-22".
I bring up "Catch-22" and I'll be bringing it up again soon because it is the first novel of any war that I'd read on this list. Now I have "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks to compare it too.
I won't go too much into "Catch-22" except to say it was a pointless novel about the pointlessness of war and the pointlessness of everything. Nihilistic to its core it even went so far, to me, as to not even be able to justify its existence. "Birdsong", on the other hand, blimey what a book.
The reason I hadn't gone back to it, and thereby back to this blog, was due to the first part of the book. I made the horrible, horrible mistake of judging it by the first 99 pages.
"Birdsong" opens up from the perspective of Stephen, a young man somehow attached to the British military, who has come to live at the home of the Azaires. Rene, the husband, teaches Stephen about the French textile industry. Isabelle is the second wife of Rene and takes care of his children. It doesn't take long for romantic tension to build up between Stephen and Isabelle and I proceeded to gag.
I like a love story. I have an almost feminine love for love stories. Watching a couple go through the BS of life trying to find each other, and then overcoming insurmountable odds to end up together and hand in hand bravely face down the rest of their lives... Honestly there probably isn't a better, more hopeful thing someone can write about. BUT...This whole "oh dash it all, Penbrooke, I'm married to another...whatever shall we do...Oh, I can't...but, oh, I want to" back and forth tripe is ridiculous. When the obstacles to a romance are marriage, that's when I check out.
It's not love. It's hormones. I know, the post-modernists would rise up and say, "But all love is just hormones!" to which vehemently respond that just because that is the entirety of your limited experience, that doesn't necessarily make it so. There is out there significant love; true, faithful, sure, enduring, selfless love. I know because I experience that every day. Infidelity, even when it's dressed up as polyamory, or an "open marriage" is the exact opposite. It is false, unfaithful, unsolid, fleeting, selfish lust. There is nothing noble in it whatsoever; nothing that pushes the human narrative towards the light, and I reject it as a narrative device wholeheartedly.
Except...
Except when it is not glorifying it. When it shows, and rightly so, how destructive and gutting it truly is.
When we arrive at the end of the first part of the novel (which is broken up into 7 episodes or acts) we see just that. The farce is laid bare, the hopes are dashed, and the child they created between the two of them returns to her husband. Stephen watches both the woman he "loves" and the child she is carrying walk out the door with only a cowardly note left behind.
I don't root for a cheating couple. I can't. I won't. Yes, her husband punishes her with a belt. He's a brute and a terrible man. I agree. But infidelity is not a cure for anything.
The second of the 7 episodes begins with Stephen on the front lines of World War I. And I'll properly write that episode up next time.
Pax,
W
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