Something New

    We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

“AT THE GRAND GLACIER HOTEL” by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin, $NZ36.99)

I am a little behind the band, but I have only now got around to reading Laurence Fearnley’s novel At the Grand Glacier Hotel. It was first published in 2024 and it was a finalist for the Ockham NZ  Books Awards in 2025. I have read nearly all of Laurence Fearnley’s novels. I recall reviewing in newspapers her earlier novels Mother’s Day and Edwin and Matilda. And in this blog you can find my reviews of her The Hut Builder, Reach, The Quiet Spectacular [ the novel that I thought was too preachy], To the Mountains - an anthology , and Winter Time which I think is one of her most readable novels. [To see all these reviews, look at Laurence Fearnley on the list at the right.]. When I reviewed Winter Time, I said “…her greatest skill… is setting her story in a harsh South Island winter, which she depicts with careful and close observation. Fearnley has much expertise when it comes to mountains and the outdoors (remember she co-edited an anthology about New Zealand mountains, and helped write a mountaineering friend’s autobiography). It shows here as she charts the seasons changing, the snow, the semi-thaw, the way plants behave in the cold and the inconveniences for walkers and other travellers. The chilliest images in Winter Time are of [a man] alone in the family home, with the cold biting at him. A perfect image for a man who is lonely, worried in his heart...”

Fearnley’s skill is in At the Grand Glacier Hotel as well, where she can easily tell us about the flora and fauna of the South Island and give us a sweeping view of the West Coast as well as looking into the matter of birds and other creatures that are unique to the South Island. It is also clear [and apparently related to her own life] that she knows about what it is to become ill and having to put up with being in hospital… as well as the matter of growing older.

A brief synopsis goes like this. The novel is written in the first person by “Libby” Holt.  She and her husband Curtis have been married for 25 years. They live in Dunedin. Libby is about 50. They have one daughter Hannah who appears in the novel only occasionally. Libby and Curtis can’t go overseas. Out of nostalgia, they decide to go the Grand Glacier Hotel, which is on the West Coast and where they had holidayed when they were younger. But, by a mistake, Curtis has to leave her as he dashes away and then has to go back his work. At one point in the novel, Libby says “What he said about not missing each other was true but it didn’t reflect poorly in our relationship. Before I got sick, we were both happily independent; it defined our marriage. One of us would often be away, Travelling for work, and we enjoyed busy lives and careers. Time together was a welcome addition, but not something we clung to”. [Chapter Eleven]  So Libby is on her own in the very old Grand Glacier Hotel. The main point here is that Libby has gone through the trauma of having cancer and also having a tumour on her leg. Although she is doing reasonably well, she is often hurt when she walks or when she has to get out of the bath. Very often, she remembers with horror all the times when she had to be in a hospital or being dealt with by doctors. Chapter Twenty-Seven  Late in the novel she says: “ For months I’d endured blood tests, cannulas for CT and MRI scans, transfusions and IV’s, not the mention general anaesthetics. I’d become almost immune to needles and been merely curious about the track marks and the bruises that extended from my shoulder to my thumb. But every now and then, during my worst moments, the prodding and strain had been too much and my teeth would begin to chatter. I could feel the same thing beginning to happen now…” [ Chapter Twenty-Seven]

At first in Grand Glacier Hotel, she feels all alone, and not capable of walking alone on the paths; but she does get to know some of the people, some of whom seem to be regulat visitors  – a young woman who seems to be writing pop novels; a cult of people who sometimes speak in Esperanto; and an older man called Mc.Kendrick who has some sort of relationship with a younger man called man James. She also goes through a severe storm where there is a power-cut. But despite her pain, she is still determined to walk the wet and sometimes steep paths. She says “ I could still feel the bruising burn across my breasts and all the way down my shins. The heaviness that never let up had a hold on my leg, weighing it down like a toddler clinging to my calf. Every step required a concentrated lift up, followed by a swing forward. I was so completely worn down, I wanted to go back to my room but I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. Mind over matter: I wasn’t a complete failure. So here I was, making the most of the outdoors again.” [Chapter Eighteen]

Clearly, Laurence Fearnley wants us to see Libby as both a brave and thoughtful person, not one to whine, but also not presented as a hero. She is an intelligent common-sense person who simply wants to get on with things and not waste time. It is an appealing image, carefully presented by the author. Libby, it turns out, is greatly helped  by the younger man James, who knows the tracks, knows many things about birds, flora and fauna including bats in caves, and opens her eyes to the nature of the Wild West Coast. Now if this were a Hollywood film, Libby would fall in love with young James etc. etc. Not a bit of it. James helps Libby and Libby has a lot to think about. Two mature people, and it turns out that James has also gone through some physical pain in his life. Libby also learns what some the Coasters mores are which she didn’t know.

There is only one thing in this novel that irks me. There is in the novel a sort of scavenger hunt in which James sometimes works out where thing are hiding, and enlightening Libby about these things. This seems very artificial. A small quibble though. I think this is one of  Laurence Fearnley’s best.

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Footnote: In this novel there is comment made on the way the glaciers on the West Coast have diminished over the years. This I know well. About 40 years ago my wife and I toured around the South Island and we stopped to look at both the Fox and the Franz Josef Glaciers. They had both retreated into the mountains far from the sea, but there was still much glacier to see.  Last year we took a similar journey and saw the same two glaciers. There had retreated even further into the barren mountains so that there was very little to see at all.

Somthing Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago. 

THE DEFINITIVE JUDGEMENT OF WILLIAM GOLDING’S WORKS                                                             [No other judgement will be accepted.]

 

For the last three months I have been working my way through all of William Golding’s novels and writing comments about them. As I said when I began this enterprise I was not going to write about his first novel Lord of the Flies because any true reader would have read it and already know what it is about. It has been published and re-published more than any other of Golding’s works. Lord of the Flies is often used as a text in high-schools. Indeed those who do not read much assume that Lord of the Flies is the only novel by Golding that is worth reading. I also noted that, before I began reading all of Golding’s works, I had read Golding’s second novel The Inheritors which, life-long, Golding said he thought was his best novel. I wrote on this blog about The Inheritors some years before I decided to read and review all his other novels. I am aware that Golding wrote a play, two collections of reviews and commentary, and a book about visiting in Egypt; but I deal only with his novels – and one collection of novelle.

Golding’s earlier novels were what could be called fables or allegories, and in all of them he speaks of what is deeply flawed in the human race. Despite being thinking creatures, we homo sapiens are capable of being murderous creatures, deceiving, making war, being jealous, lusting for power, and getting others to follow down the wrong path. Of course this is not true of all homo sapiens, but it has formed much of history. In Lord of the Flies, Golding has schoolboys stranded on an idyllic island which at first seems paradise, but one gang of boys take over, first learning how to hunt and kill pigs; and then ending up hunting – and killing – the boys who are not part of their gang. There is a more-or-less saintly boy called Simon who understands what evil is. It is not outside us. It is within us. Two other boys Ralph and “Piggy” are reasoning boys who understand that something is wrong. But these three boys are the target of the hunters. So, in many ways, we are flawed. What made us go wrong? If you were a Christian, you would talk about Original Sin – God gave us Paradise, but we disobeyed God. Many other religions have ideas on how things went wrong, such as the Ying and Yang saying there is a permanent war between good and evil… and so on.

But, as I interpret it, Golding was not entirely satisfied with his first novel. He wanted to give us a more persuasive version of “the fall of man”.  Many savants have attempted to explain why there has always been violent discord among human beings. In the 17^th century Thomas Hobbes said “life in the state of nature is solitary, nasty, brutish, and short” and this was taken to mean that there was a sort of unending war among primitive human beings. Hobbes solution was that there should be a dominating force, a firm government to control any society. In the 18th century Rousseau, with typical naivety in his treatise De L’Inegalite Parmi Les Hommes, claimed that early primitive peoples were happy and peaceful when they were “hunter-gatherers” [not that Rousseau knew that term] but human beings became violent and fought wars only when they set up barriers and fences and claimed land as their own.  Golding’s The Inheritors is not as naïve as Rousseau’s idea, but he comes very close to it. In a far distant time Golding pits Neanderthals against Homo Sapiens Sapiens – in other words us. The Neanderthals are presented as peaceful, caring creatures who look after their tribe, do not know what aggression is, are thoughtful, and have their rituals. By contrast the “inheritors”- us -  are capable of violence, don’t mind killing Neanderthals, are capable of going to war etc. So here is Golding’s version of “paradise lost”. Golding, towards the end of the novel, does suggest that the “inheritors” have at least the merit of being able to create arts. And one Neanderthal infant is captured and looked after, perhaps suggesting that the two species will combine… and it is true that recent examinations of D. N. A.  show that many people have some genes coming from the Neanderthals. But what Golding got wrong was the idea that Neanderthals were permanently peaceful. The most recent studies show that they were as belligerent as the Homo Sapiens who followed them. So his attempt to explain The Fall does not persuade. Yet The Inheritors is still a compelling story.

Golding’s next novels are also allegories. Pincher Martin, the sailor who was stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean, does not realise he is dead until he comes face-to-face with God. A “wicked man” [as Golding described him to his wife] Pincher curses God. He has been in Purgatory. Golding, raised by an atheist father and an Anglican church-going mother, decided to use the Catholic idea of Purgatory. At least then he would be able to make his character have the time to repent. Free Fall gives us the long self-confession of a man who was only interested in himself and had never helped others. He was self-obsessed. Only late in his life does he understand that he has under-valued  others… but it is not as simple as that. As is often the case in Golding’s work, the ending is ambiguous. The Spire deals with hubris, placed in a medieval setting where a priest is more concerned with his prestige than with his religious duties. The novel also touches a clash between religion and early science.

When we get to The Pyramid, we are reading a very different type of novel. It is not allegory, but is more in the nature of a version of Golding’s youth. Not entirely, and many events are fictitious, but certainly looking back at some things he recalled; and very readable. After which he went dry. Apart from the three novelle that were put together with the title The Scorpion God,  Golding did not write any more novels for a bit over ten years. What had happened? The hard fact is that Golding had become an alcoholic and found it hard to focus. When he got himself together, his next novel Darkness Visible again gnawed at the idea of God, or at least some substitute thereof. The novel includes a naïve but Christ-like character called Matty who has to deal with evil. But it was not necessarily a struggle with God. It was more a struggle with what evil is in us. When it came to The Paper Men, he was not only satirising publishers and pests who wanted to write his biography; but by having as his main character a drunkard, he was really depicting himself.  I regard his trilogy To the Ends of the Earth  [Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, Fire Down Below]  as his relief as a former seaman, certainly dealing with the sordor of ships in the early 18^th century and even dealing with some pure evil, but not really dealing with God or no God. By this stage, he had himself declared that he was a Christian. In his posthumous novel The Double Tongue, set in decaying Ancient Greece, Golding warns us that all societies ultimately decay and fade away, and perhaps this also means the decay of religion.. But though the main character, a priestess, has lost her faith with the gods, she still yearns  for “The Unknown God”. Perhaps Golding is saying, like it or not, that we human beings will always feel the need for a greater force than ourselves. In other words, God.

So what critique can I give you after reading all his novels? I admit that I found Darkness Visible and The Paper Men to be hard reading, in some places almost cryptic. Having said that though, most of his prose is clear and he makes a good case for still trying to work out whether there is or is not a God.

Footnote: Apart from Lord of the Flies, all William Golding’s novels are examined on this blog.  

Something

   Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.    

                                   ROYALTY ARE NOT GODS                    

In the Nineteenth Century, in the reign of Queen Victoria, the wise Walter Bagehot said that the only thing keeping Royalty going was “mystery” and having a “dignified role”. Famously he said “Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” What he was clearly telling his readers was that kings and queens are not outstanding people and are not always wise… and common people would be disappointed if they saw or knew about the behaviour of royalty in their ordinary lives, including sexual matters. Royalty are usually mediocre.

Obviously I am leading you to think about the [former] Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Thirty or so years ago it was common for happy pundits to call him “Randy Andy” as if it were all a jolly joke. Now he has been found to be a lecher who has sexually messed up the lives of under-age girls, leading at least one to commit suicide. He has also made illegal deals with shady entrepreneurs. His mother, the late queen, often said that Andrew was her favourite child. It seems obvious that he was particularly pampered by his mother and thought in some way that he was beyond the law. Remember, too, that he took – with his mother’s approved – a large wad out of the common purse to pay off one the young women he had sexually messed with.

But then I’m not too surprised by all this. Kings, queens and other royalty in many countries often saw themselves as above the law in one way or another. But let me focus on England. In the medieval era, in the Wars of the Roses, royalty fought with one another, slaughtering and often raping both peasants and commoners… and they left behind them unstable kings who were sometimes overthrown. There was nothing romantic about it. But then they were above the law… In the 16^th century, King Henry 8th went through six women and chopped off the heads of two of them. He was above the law. In the 17^th century King Charles the Second had a barren wife and left behind him no heir. But he sired at least 16 children from five women – all gentlewomen and most duchesses. But, to his credit, he made sure that his offspring were well looked after, the duchesses were honored by his shagging and society didn’t care. But then he was above the law…. In the early 19^th century the heir to the throne was a rake who took women when he pleased. This was George IV. But then along came the Victorian era. Queen Victoria was very prim and her husband was very prim too. No scandals in their court. But Victoria lived for so long that her son Edward had nothing to do but gambling, carousing and bedding women. When finally Victoria died and Edward became Edward VII,  he married and had children and it all looked respectable… but his favourite enjoyment was making use of the brothels of Paris. For some he was called “Dirty Bertie”. His son George V seems to have been upright, but his eldest son was the nitwit Edward VIII who abdicated and who rather liked that German guy Hitler. His brother became King George VI who seems to have done well and there was no scandal about him. And so to his daughter Queen Elizabeth the Second. I have heard no scandal about the queen herself and she worked diligently but [sorry for the easily offended among you] it is now widely rumoured that her consort Prince Philip had many extra-marital affairs… but the delusion of a perfect marriage had to be maintained. And so we come to the present king, King Charles the Third. Like Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth the Second lived for a long time so that her heir Charles was – and is – an old man. Has he done anything outrageous? Well when he was young, he did marry a young woman who was as naïve as he was. They had children but the marriage fell apart. His young wife said she was tired of having to put up with “three in a bed” – meaning that another woman was also shagging Charles. Anyway she died in a car crash and he then married the other woman who is now his consort.

Now I know what you are thinking. You think I have just been peddling cheap scandal of the sort that you could find in the gutter press. I would also guess that some of you want to tell me that there are, and have been, dictators and corrupt presidents who have done much worse things than the English monarchy. But I already knew that. One last defence of the English monarchy I have heard that, whenever a member of the royalty had done something obnoxious, somebody says  “ Well they’re only human”. Well yes indeed they are.

All of which brings me back to Walter Bagehot’s statement on royalty: “Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” The fact is that the “magic” is now long gone and the “daylight” is loudly shouting. In the U.K., every newspaper and every magazine and every television channel follows what the “royals” are doing, for good or bad. Some very minor members of “the firm” are not in the spotlight; but the major members of “the firm” are in the spotlight. I think the real turning point was in 1987 when younger members of the Royal family took part in a “Royal Knockout” – based on a T.V. show. What it signalled was that the members of the game were trivial twits trying hard to be “just ordinary folks”.

What do I think of the Royal Family now? As far as I know, the great majority of people in England still like having a King [or Queen] and its up to them to say whether or not it should stay that way. But there are now many grumbles in England about the large areas of land that “the firm” owns… and ideas that numbers of the royalty should be scaled down…  and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been of no help.

As a New Zealander, I am far away from England, though I have lived in the place a number of times. Royal members visit New Zealand only every so often, but our country runs itself. Laws are made in New Zealand, not in England, though occasionally New Zealand lawyers appeal to England when they are dealing with thorny cases that have been disputed. So really I’m not the man to say how long it will be until the English royal system is either reformed or has disappeared… or, more likely, it will just go wobbling along.  

Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

            “THE BURIED CITY – Unearthing the Real Pompeii” by Gabriel Zuchtriegel (English translation by Jamie Bulloch) First published in English in 2025.

It may seem odd that I am here reviewing in my “Something New” section a book that was published last year and that has already been widely read in many English-speaking countries; but then I had only recently came across it. It was given to me as a present by a very generous person and I read it over the days after Christmas. Whenever I think of Pompeii and Vesuvius, I remember a number of things. From my father’s shelves when I was young, I read the heroic story Pliny the Younger told of [his uncle] Pliny the Elder, who bravely attempted to rescue people fleeing from the catastrophe when the volcano exploded. It came up again when I was learning Latin at secondary school. Later, complete and unabridged, I read to my children [when they were young teenagers] Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s popular 19^th century novel The Last Days of Pompeii. They found much of it to be very silly – and so did I – but some parts of it were engaging. And of course as a kid I saw a couple of Hollywood-type films that were based on the novel. Now I understand that Bulwer-Lytton’s narrative had little to do with what really had happened to Pompeii. Some years later, when I was in Italy, I twice visited Pompeii – the first time on my own, the second with my wife. Though we spent a whole day walking among the ruins, we were aware that it would take very many weeks to see everything that could be seen in Pompeii. One amusing moment came when an Italian guide proudly told a group of tourists that a certain house was the house that “Bulwer” had described. The tourists scratched their heads, not having the least idea of whom “Bulwer” was, which probably shows that Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel is rarely read now.

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            So much for my musings. Let’s get to The Buried City. Gabriel Zuchtriegel, an archaeologist, is German by birth but Italian by having been naturalised. He is a polymath speaking many languages, including Italian, and he knows the ancient Greece and Latin languages thoroughly. UNESCO has declared that Pompeii is now a World Heritage Site, and Zuchtriegel is now the official director of Pompeii and its environs. In his forward, he talks of those tourists who come to Pompeii merely to “tick off their bucket lists” and of thieves who try to steal antiquities to sell to the rich. Such people do not understand what Pompeii was before Vesuvius destroyed it in 79 A.D. Zuchtriegel says that too many archaeologists become obsessed with the minutia of the sizes of pillars, while he himself is more concerned with how ordinary people lived in ancient Pompeii.

            More than anything, he says, “Pompeii offers us a unique profile of a provincial city in the ancient Roman world. With its houses, shops, bakeries, brothels, pubs, fountains and cemeteries (which in antiquity always lay outside the city walls) Pompeii is an immeasurably rich source for archaeology.” (p.20) He also notes that “On the day that Mountain Vesuvius erupted the city was frozen, so to speak, offering a unique opportunity  for modern  archaeology to plunge into the ancient world.” (p. 21). Stones [lapilli] rained down on the day of disaster, fumes suffocated people trying to reach the sea, buildings were crushed as were the people within. There had been a major earthquake in Pompeii seventeen years before the great blast of 79 A.D., but nobody worried about it and there were no attempts to alert the city to what could possibly happen.

Zuchtriegel makes it clear that Romans followed and copied Greek art. In fact at one point he notes that Pompeii did not ever have the best art work. He says that ancient Rome, Capua and Verona had more great art works than Pompeii ever had, and they had larger arenas.  He spends some time examining the famous copy of the statue of the Greek god Apollo and its connection with Greek culture. Sensuality and eroticism were displayed in some of the houses of the rich. Zuchtriegel spends some time with freaks and hermaphrodites as they were depicted in Greek tales. Wealthy people’s walls were painted with images of Greek fables and the doings of the Greek gods, sometimes dealing with rape or violence but just as often dealing with images of serenity or weddings. One house, excavated in the early years of archaeologism [in the late 19^th century] was named as the House of the Vetti, generally interpreted as a brothel. Wealthy people also had slaves, and the prostitutes were slaves. Slaves could be freed sometimes, but often this would simply mean that an old slave was of no worth anymore and the freed slave was left in poverty and would have nowhere to go.

Having explained all of this, Zuchtriegel notes that in the last years of Pompeii there was a god that was very popular. This was the Greek Dionysus. But he also notes that the very ground Pompeii was built on was originally Etruscan land, and the Etruscan gods were related to nature and agriculture. There were many rituals that had been carried through to the late years of Pompeii. He then returns to the state of the city as it now is. Among other things, some of the ruins were destroyed during the Second World War due to American bombing near to Naples. For a long time there were misunderstandings about the meanings of some buildings that had been buried in the 79 A.D. earthquake. For example, one building that was dug up by amateur archaeologists in the early 20^th century, became known as the Villa of Mysteries because it looked dark and there was a long frieze whose meaning was difficult to understand. Could it have been the site of a forbidden cult? But it is now understood that there was no mystery at all. The villa, as it originally stood, was open to the passing public, there were no orgies taking place in it, and the images on the wall had to do with celebrations of a wedding.

It is in the last parts of The Buried City that Gabriel Zuchtriegel goes back to what actually happened when Pompeii was almost obliterated. He likes to show how ordinary people – not just the rich – were going through the streets of the city just before the sky fell in. One example was a chariot that has only recently been dug up by modern archaeologists. Only parts of it survived, but it was clearly being driven on its way to some ordinary event.  Zuchtriegel also often reminds us that those who lived in the most horribly cramped quarters were the poor people – who made up most of the population – and the slaves. As he sees it, the most important people in Pompeii were the poor and the slaves who kept the city running. They were the ones who drove carts bringing into the city the food that came from the fields and the fishing boats, cooked and produced meals, looked after the children of rich etc. Yet they had to live in the worst houses.

Regrettably, says Zuchtriegel, despite all the help of the police, there is still in Naples the Camorra – the Neapolitan version of the Sicilian Mafia -  which illegitimately raids parts of Pompeii, stealing antiquities and selling them to the rich in the black market. But things are now being tightened. There is the frequently-asked question “How many people lived in Pompeii at the time it was destroyed?” Answers range from 40,000 to 20,000, but one also has to be aware of the fact that the rural areas, which brought in grain, stock and milk, should also be seen as part of Pompeii. At an odd point, too,  Zuchtriegel says that Pompeii was probably economically declining in the years before its ruin. Apparently more local farmers now raised grapes as wine became most important… but this meant that grain had to be imported from different countries – like Egypt  - at great price.  

I regret to say that I found the last section of The Buried City to be the least interesting. Zuchtriegel speaks of the difficulties he had before UNESCO made him the official supervisor of Pompeii and environs. He says that there was a campaign against him when some Italian professors thought he was too young for the job. After this he talks of the things he has inaugurated, such as getting troops to play ancient plays in the ancient arena of Pompeii. He also campaigns for schools to get more young people to come from Naples and be aware of the important site that is so near to them. And of course he and his fellow archaeologists continue to dig. There is much more to find. Interestingly, he spends a little time critiquing Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii. He notes that much of the novel turns on a young Christian woman and some other Christians who are in danger of being persecuted. Zuchtriegel does remind us that Nero did persecute Christians in Rome as scape-goats for the great fire. But, he says, there is no evidence that any Christians lived in Pompeii.

And here is an interesting fact. After the destruction of Pompeii, Romans quickly understood that Pompeii could not be rebuilt. It was really only in the 18^th century that Pompeii began  to be examined by early archaeologists. He adds an afterword about what work is being done… a never-ending story.

Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year ago. 

“THE DOUBLE TONGUE” by William Golding (published in 1999)

William Golding died in June 1993. A Publishers’ Note (by Faber and Faber) tells us that Golding had written two drafts of his last novel and he was about to write a third draft when he died. The title The Double Tongue was chosen by the publishers out of many titles that Golding had considered. Inevitably there are some things missing in the text we now have, especially in Chapter 4 where much of an important conversation between two major characters is apparently missing. Surprisingly though, I found this novel to be one of the clearest and most readable of his novels. Golding is, as he had been many times before, wrestling with either the idea of God [or gods] or the idea of atheism.

Golding was always interested in Classics [i.e. Ancient Greece and Rome]. The Double Tongue is set in ancient Greece, but it is Greece in its declining era. Rome is gradually becoming the dominant force in the Mediterranean countries, perhaps about 300 BC. Arieka is a young peasant Grecian girl. Her father wants to get her married and is willing to pay the dowry. A young man is willing to marry her, but she will have none of it and runs away. She is forced back… but the young man has lost interest in her. Arieka does not like boys and young men. So, after much anger from her father, she is put in front of Ionidies, who is in charge of finding young women  who will be assistants to the Pythia of Delphi – that is, the Oracle or soothsayer at Delphi who is supposed to answer difficult questions put to her by troubled people. The Pythia has long been revered at Delphi, although academics in Athens are now very sceptical about her powers, although country people still rely on her.

So Arieka is taken to Delphi by Ionidies, who on the journey gives her some points about all the parts of Greece that are now being taken over by Romans – such as Sicily. When they get to Delphi,  Ionidies introduces her to the library that is held in the Pythia’s domain. Arieka is quickly interested in reading and is gradually immersed in reading... so much that over the years she herself becomes a true scholar. Perhaps more importantly, she is first introduced to the Pythia, a fat, old and blind woman. There is always a young woman who will become the next Pythia after the current Pythia dies. The Pythia tells Arieka that there is a woman waiting to be Pythia; and then after that woman Arieka will be Pythia – so she is in effect Number Three, at first admired for what they think is her country simplicity.

Areika, female, not interested in men, is [as William Golding frames her] almost like a nun, but she is very inquisitive. Ionidies is a high priest in charge of giving prayers to the god Apollo . But he says his aim is to revive the glory of Athens… the Athens that used to be of philosophers… and Ionidies admits that, like many philosophers, he is really an atheist. He does not believe in the gods. He explains that in older times, the Pythia would answer questions in clasic lordly hexameters for important people who had real problems to solve. Now, in a Delphi that is decaying, the only people who come to the Pythia for advice are simple farmers and peasants who ask about trivial things… and more and more, the people most likely to come to Delphi are tourists who are there only out of curiosity.

The old Pythia dies. There is a new Pythia. So Areika is second in turn. For all her piety, she is beginning to loose her faith after all of Ionidies’ talk about the charlatan oracles there now are. [And it is at this point that  - in Chapter 4 - we do not get what was probably going to be an important conversation between Ionidies and Areika about gods or no gods. My guess is that this was going to be the most difficult for Golding to write, it being such a formidable topic.]

The next Pythia dies… and so Areika is now the Pythia. But more than ever, Roman rule is taking over. Certainly many still cling to the old gods and Greeks still speak Greek [in their many dialects], but many are also learning Latin. And while Areika goes through all the ceremonies that she is obliged to undertake, she finds that only a few come for worship. There are three days when  the Pythia can be the Oracle giving advice. Many ask pointless questions and on the last day hardly anybody comes. Later, Areika has a long conversation with many of the visitors – mainly tourists – including Phoenicians, Macedonains,  Romans and others and is aware that there are many gods she has never heard of.  In conversation, many say that Greece had never been united and has always been a collection of cities bickering with one another. How feeble a thing it now is.

There is a festival – a sort of carnival – and the Pythia becomes less and less important. One of her subordinates suggest to her that they could make a lot of money by trickery…. And she is distressed.

Now at last, she has come to believe that “the trouble with the old gods is that if you put them together they fight… You can’t get anywhere with a bunch of gods because you are looking in two directions at once and stuck.” She now comes to believe that there must be only one definitive god. The Pythion [the home of the Pythia] is literally falling apart. The roof will soon fall down. So she goes to Athens [now a free city under Roman protection] seeking for money to repair the roof; but in Athens she is seen merely as an oddity even if a very few still worship her; and in Athens there is much decadence. She returns to Delphi. The roof has fallen down. Only some of it has been fixed. She is now even more sure that the gods are not real and she no longer communicates with the gods. When, in later years, she is about to die, she asks that her headstone have carved on the stone only four words – "To the Unknown God". 

What is Golding doing here? Most obviously he is reminding us that cultures, societies and whole nations can come and go over hundreds of years. The Greece he depicts is dying, despite all the glory of its past. At the same time he is, as always, being ambiguous about God or gods or atheism. Arieka in the end hopes for the unknown god – only one God. Is this a matter of faith or a hope for universal acknowledgment of the one true god… or, as an atheist would say, is this all wishful thinking?  Certainly there is chartlatan-ism in many religious communities, but then at the same time this is true of many atheists. Who can really be sure there is [or isn’t] a one true God? Yet, like it or not, religions and gods of many sorts have existed since human beings had began to think. A force greater than us rules the universe.  We look up to it. Meanwhile, Arieka’s hope is heartfelt. She has gone from belief to scepticism to hope… like any thinking person.

Foot Note: What does the given title The Double Tongue mean? It could mean many things, but I interpret it as referring to a habit the old Oracles had. When asked really thorny questions, they would deliberately give incredibly ambiguous answers.

 

Something Thoughtful

    Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

                                                          DRIVELLING TRIPE

Many years ago in the Stone Age, when I was a rookie high-school teacher in my first school – an upper-class school -  my boss told me which novels I should teach to what was then called Form Six – a senior class. It was a boys school, and the novel I was given was Wuthering Heights. I diligently read it and took notes and read what academics had to say about it and prepared my lessons carefully including what the boys’ homework would be and what kind of tests I would give them. Finally, well prepared, I walked into the class. To their credit, the boys were well-behaved and we ploughed our way through the novel over three weeks with brakes to deal with other English-language work. But when we got through both the novel and all the essays the boys had done, I gave one lesson in which the boys were allowed to say what they really thought of Wuthering Heights. Some were quite positive, but saying that they thought some of the characters were extreme and their behaviour was almost hysterical. Some said that they found the nineteenth-century language difficult to follow. And though they didn’t say it, it was clear that it was not a novel that adolescent boys could really like. To put it brutally, they seemed to be saying it was something that adolescent girls would be more likely to enjoy.

Now I was not so naïve as to be unaware that some of the boys would have resorted to cheat-cribs – Coles Notes,  Monarch Notes etc. – those pamphlets that used to tell lazy readers everything about the plot, the characters, the ideas etc. of a novel without having to actually read the novel itself. [At university I knew enough students who had the same idea]. But back when I was teaching schoolboys, there was not yet the plague we now have where lazy both students and school boys-and-girls simply look up their computer to be told everything they need to write what are supposed to be essays. But I digress…

Years later, I read once more Wuthering Heights. And guess what?  I found myself agreeing with the boys I had taught. Please do not immediately assume that I am some sort of male chauvinist. Wuthering Heights is still very popular with many younger women, but I have read enough articles and essays by women who have damned it and seen it as romantic nonsense at its worst. Perhaps teenage girls will be enthralled by the idea of Cathy and Heathcliff running around together in the moor, but the fact is that Heathcliff is a thug, Cathy is gullible and her romantic vows mean nothing… and if you read the whole novel, you will learn that they mess up the lives of the younger generation that comes after them. The fact is, I think Emily Bronte was a much lesser author that than her sister Charlotte. Yes, Jane Ayre,  Villette, and even Shirley have their moments of melodrama [“Reader, I married him”] . But at least Charlotte Bronte tried to deal with reality and she fought a good fight for the status of women – she was an early feminist.  Emily, though she had some bright moments, was a fantasists.

Now why on earth have I bother you with all this?

A new film version of Wuthering Heights has just been released (put together by Emerald Fennell; Margot Robbie as Cathy, Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff) . I have not seen the film and, being a good reviewer of films, I do not make comments about films that I have not seen.  But I am aware that many reviewers have damned this new film for being very different from the novel. Of course all film adaptations of novels simplify the original novel, but apparently this particular film goes far away from the original novel altogether. Apparently lots of sex, some sadism, bad casting. Naturally those who have never read the novel think this is hot stuff and the reviewers who have never read the novel say you should ignore the “purists”  [meaning those who know the novel]. One reviewer, writing for a perfectly intelligent magazine, wrote a very positive review of the film, but she mentioned that she had never read the novel. She had only heard about Wuthering Heights because she knew the pop song Kate Bush wrote and sang in 1978.

All of which leads me to the obvious. The semi-literate or the never-readers often think they know all about a classic novel because they saw the movie version of it. Nine out of ten times, the movie has little to do with the novel.

Let’s look at some examples. I looked up Wikipedia [yes I do that sometimes] and I was told that over the years Wuthering Heights has been turned into a film over 19 times; there have been 10 full-length television versions of Wuthering Heights; there have been five television versions that were presented as serials; the novel has been twice turned into an opera and of course the novel has many times been acted on the radio. Of the 19 film versions, Wikipedia notes that they included Indian Bollywood versions, a Japanese version, and a Filipino version.

As it happens, over the years I have seen five film versions of Wuthering Heights and one or two B.B.C. television versions. But there are only four that stand out to me – not because they are great but because they are in their own ways odd. First there is the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon – decent enough, but sweetened-up and notorious for dealing with only the first half of the novel. In 1988, there was the  French version of Wuthering Heights called Hurlevent  starring Juliette and Ralph Fiennes. Good casting but …um… not very English. There was, in 1970, quite a good version with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marsh, but not outstanding. In fact the only one that really stood out for me was a film that you have probably never heard of. The film Abismo de Pasion [The Abyss of Passion] – a version of Wuthering Heights in Spanish - was directed by Luis Bunuel, the Spanish director whose career had begun  with surrealism. He stuck with what was either very realist or very crazy. Abismo de Pasion is both – what is sordid and how crazy the main characters are, Cathy and Heathcliff, really tearing each other for no real purpose. Yes indeed, that is really all they do in the novel, although even Luis Bunuel also skipped second half of the novel.

Naturally, I have offended some readers who have read the novel Wuthering Heights and love it. Sorry, but I am not of that clan. Crudely joining the boys a taught so long ago, I can’t help remembering how they sometimes referred to Wuthering Heights as Drivelling Tripe.

And do remember that film versions of novels are never like the original novel.

Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

  “FLESH” by David Szalay [Jonathan Cape publishers; $NZ38:00]

 

            When the Booker Prize is announced, many literate readers rush to the book shops hoping to find a new masterpiece. Sometimes they are rewarded with an outstanding novel, such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which is still regarded as “the Booker of Bookers”. But let’s be honest. Sometimes the winner is a dud, leaving reviewers scratching their heads. This year, the Booker was won by David Szalay, still a youngish man, born in Canada with a Jewish mother and a Hungarian father, raised in England, went to Oxford and now [says the blurb] lives in Vienna. He has written five previous novels, but now comes Flesh. And, as usual, some reviewers proclaim it as a masterpiece while others think it is appalling. Let me be neutral at first as I dive into the book.

            Running to 349 pages, Flesh begins as a shocker. In Hungary, Istvan is a teenager – all of fifteen. He is seduced by a woman about forty who makes use of him when her husband is not around. She bonks him this way and that way and her over him and him over her and under the bed and over the bed and in positions you’ve never heard of and really kinky stuff. This means that the first thirty pages read like sheer pornography. Dear reader, it is not a novel to give to your nice granny for Christmas.  Anyway, naïve teenager Istvan thinks he has found the love of his life; so he gets a big shock when the woman tells him to get lost as her husband comes back. She has really used him as a sex-toy. Istvan finds it hard to believe. In a scuffle on the stairwell he shoves the husband down the stairs. The husband hits his head and is killed. Istvan, being a juvenile, is not locked up in jail but it sent to a reform school for three years.

So what do we, as readers, immediately understand? That, in Istvan’s mind,  love is less important but sex [i.e. bonking] is necessary, or at least that is the way Istvan sees it. And that being the case, women are mainly there to be used. They are flesh only. I read it, that is why the novel is called Flesh. Men are also to be used to, but only when they can help him get ahead. No softness in the eye of a cynic.

            I will deliberately give you a very brief synopsis only as this long story unravels. Being out of the institute for young offenders, Istvan gets a boring job, tries to get girls, doesn’t really get anywhere, and finally joins the army.

He’s in the army for five years, on N.A.T.O’s peace-keeping missions. He sees a mate getting badly hurt. Along comes a sort of battle fatigue. How does he deal with this? Taking illicit drugs of course, and with his mate chasing available girls [okay – young women, but you know what I mean].  He’s left the army. Where can he find a job? He goes to London and gets a job as a bouncer at a sleazy strip-joint in Soho.

Dead end, right? Nope. Because fortuitously novelists can create events that will keep the protagonist going. Istvan, now a strong and muscular man and capable of fighting, rescues a man who is being beaten up by thugs.

The man – Karl Nyman – happens to be a multimillionaire. Nyman pays professionals to show Istvan how to deal with polite society in London, how to fend off thugs, and in effect how to become Nyman’s body-guard. Nyman also makes Istvan his wife’s chauffeur. She is called Helen. Nyman and Helen have a little son called Thomas.

Behind Nyman’s back, Helen and Istvan begin to have an affair. More bonking and bonking and bonking. And Nyman the tycoon, who can pull strings where money is concerned, becomes racked with cancer. And goes to hospital. And dies. And Helen and Istvan marry and then have a baby called Jacob.

So Istvan is now a wealthy, flashy entrepreneur and property developer, almost top of the crowd. But there is one major snag. Young Thomas, son of Nyman and Helen, is now a pot-smoking, drugs-injecting student at Oxford. He always hated Istvan and he now understands that, according to a trust, all Nyman’s money should really come to him and not be wasted by Istvan and….

Oh stop, stop, stop!!

I have gone as far as I can because, as I have often noted, I do not give away how newly-minted novels end. And I have ignored what nuance and subtlety there is in this novel.

First, I think we are meant to see Istvan as a man who had in part been warped by his adolescent experience. He might have begun thinking he had found something vaguely like love, but his experience soured him, not helped by his further experience in the army. Yet he is not wholly insensitive. He gradually likes his little boy Jacob, although the little boy doesn’t entirely like him.

Second, in the passages where Istvan is making money, being the tycoon, dealing with other property developers in London and going to extravagant parties, David Szalay is clearly showing us the sheer nastiness of the crass upper-classes. Like mere sex, making money has little to do with real love. Yet at the same time, we can understand that Istvan in a way, coming from an impoverished  background, at least tried to climb the greasy pole, tryed to get to the top…. But again, hasn’t David Szalay made it a little too easy to get him to the top, what with the woman [Helen] who neatly puts him in her bed? Contradictions, contradictions.

Flesh is written throughout in the present tense. The language is largely simple. Many pages are written in a series of statements [sentences] rather than in paragraphs. As for Istvan, he has a very limited vocabulary. When he speaks he says little more than “Yeah” and “Okay”. For many, this will make for an easy read. I have found some reviews that see Istvan as a macho man and the epitome of such men. Surely there are such men and Flesh could be read as a kind of documentary.

As I said at the beginning of this review, some people have hailed Flesh as a work of brilliance; and others wonder why this year’s Booker judges bothered with it.

 

Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.      

            “THE PAPER MEN” by William Golding ( Published 1987)

William Golding wrote The Paper Men in1987, after he had written Rites of Passage but before he had decided to write two more seafaring novels Close Quarters and Fire Down Below which later were put together as an omnibus called To the Ends of the Earth. The Paper Men is very, very different. Over it looms the idea that "vanity, all is vanity" as the Bible says, and an awareness that only by mental pain and struggle will one understand what the real meaning of life is. Who are the "paper men"? They are writers - novelists, historians, journalists, academics -who hope they will be remembered or win prestige. Golding had already won his Nobel Prize in 1983 when he wrote The Paper Men, and he obviously knew a great deal about how publishers behave, how novelists create characters, and how there were academics who wanted to pick apart his works and perhaps misunderstood what he had written.

Written in the first person, The Paper Men is narrated by Wilfred Barclay, a well- known and admired novelist. Approaching his 60's he is a heavy drinker and a lecher. His marriage is falling apart. His wife Elizabeth has been keeping all his papers and letters in boxes. An annoying American academic, Rick L.Tucker, wants to get hold of Wilfred's papers as he aims to make his name by writing a biography of Wilfred; but Wilfred loathes the idea of somebody writing up his life. Rick goes so far as looking into Wilfred's rubbish-bin to find things Wilfred may have written. They have a [drunken] brawl. But, becoming aware of Wilfred's philandering, and hearing too much of a woman called Lucinda, Elizabeth finally divorces him.

Cut loose, and now in his 60's, he still wants to chase women. but he finds he's not good at it. He begins to wander on his own in Europe. For some time he has an affair with an Italian woman. but he gets annoyed with her when she proves to be religious and she follows the word of Padre Pio with his stigmata. He scoffs at such nonsense and moves on. His moods are not improved by going to conferences about literature, which he finds to be pompous and pointless - critics who talk about novels but have never written a novel themselves. His own books are still highly esteemed, but he is now an alcoholic, his mind often filled with what can only be called nightmares.

Some years go by. He goes to Switzerland and books into a prestigious hotel, the Weisswald, high up in the snow-covered mountains. and he is accosted by Rick L. Tucker, who is now a professor in a minor university in the U.S.A. and who is escorted by a young woman [his wife], Mary Lou, who majored in flower-arranging and in Wilfred Barclay's works. [And, dear reader, you can smell here the disdain William Golding has for American universities.] Tucker pleads to be allowed to read all Wilfred's papers, which are still being held by Wilfred's ex-wife, and he once again pleads to become Wilfred's authorised biographer. Running through Wilfred's head are memories of all the women he had bed... and young Mary Lou looks interesting. When Wilfred is drunk on brandy, Tucker tries to get him to sign a note saying he will allow him to have access to all Wilfred's papers and works. It doesn't work. Later the tempting Mary Lou also tries to get him to allow Tucker to write a biography of Wilfred. Again, no dice. But Wilfred again becomes the lecher. He invites Mary Lou to his balcony, where she can see the beauty of the stars in the clear night. He puts his arm around her... and she leaves the room. His mind bubbles with brandy. He has incoherent dreams.

 Tucker invites Wilfred to take a walk along a steep track where the snow is high and there is impenetrable fog. Holding on to a rail, Wilfred walks ahead, in his mind thinking about writing a novel ridiculing Tucker. And the rail he is holding collapses. He plunges down, clinging to rocks and roots, in peril of falling to his death. It is Tucker who pulls him up and saves him. Wilfred is grateful for only a short time and again thinks of writing something denigrating Tucker. He goes onto more benders and wanders from place to place. He wants to know about this man called Halliday whom Tucker had so often mentioned.

Wilfred goes to Greece but is harassed by a boring queer man whom he used to know. This bore tries to gossip, but it is inane and Wilfred understands how empty some people are. Where is his purpose in life? Once again, Wilfred cannot settle down anywhere. He goes again through Italy and Sicily and finds himself drinking more coffee than alcohol. He stumbles into a dark church where he has a sort of fugue, a wild dream of all he should have known about life. A breakdown follows and he is in hospital... and concludes "Not. Sin. .I Am.Sin"... meaning sin is an idea but sin is within us.

So more years go by. Wilfred  has become fatter and his body has decayed as he still drinks too much and he wanders aimlessly around Europe. He has lost the ability to be a lecher. After all these years, he meets Tucker again at Weisswald. Tucker has lost Mary Lou  to another man, Halliday. Wilfred and Tucker walk along the track that they had once walked, but this time the weather is clear and with no fog. But there is no real compromise, and Tucker says that Halliday had said that he [Tucker] should be the man to write Wilfred's biography. And at this point Wilfred rages to Tucker about all the people who are after him. Half drunk, he rants to Tucker "Think Rick, all the people who get lice like you in their hair, all the people spied on, followed, lied about, all the people offered to the great public - we'll all be revenged on the whole lot of them, ha et cetera..." [Pg. 152].

In his mind, Wilfred travels, crossing valleys and mountains and having what can only be called a greater fugue. He dreams, having nightmares, and lands in Rome. Does he taste religion in Rome? Or, in the fugue, is he categorizing religion with science and psychology and philosophy.

He goes back to England and visits his ex-wife Elizabeth. She makes it clear that he has always been narcissistic, thinks only of himself and had never been able to get on with other people. He has never taken seriously how other people think.

. . . And so comes what can only be called farce. Wilfred goes to a club in London that he used to frequented ... and Tucker catches up with him, self-confident that Wilfred will sign a note saying Tucker can write the biography of Wilfred. But in the same club there are frivolous writers who barge in drunk, and Wilfred refuses to sign Tucker's note in such company... and there is a riot in which they and the rowdies are kicked out. And Wilfred says he hates London anyway.

So he returns to his old home. His ex-wife Elizabeth has just died. His daughter is selling the fanily house... and now does Wilfred understand that life can only be understood when we have gone through suffering, pain and loss; and understanding that other people are needed in life. After Elizabeth's funeral, Wilfred accosts the Anglican priest who had presided. Wilfred says "You will find this difficult to believe but I suffer with the stigmata. Yes. Four of the five wounds of Christ. Four down and one to go. No. You can see the wounds, unlike with poor Padre Pio. But I assure you my hands and feet hurt like hell – or should I say heaven?" And so he continues for a while, bantering with the parson. But looking back through his life, there have been real wounds in his mind - all the things he should not have done.

He burns all his letters and all the boxes, so there will be no biography of him.... But as is often the case, William Golding ends this novel in an ambiguous way. Does Tucker, his life-long hope of being a biographer gone, stalks Wilfred and shoot him dead... or is this another of Wilfred's dreams? 

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *   *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

Now, dear reader, you are shouting at me because I am once again giving you nothing but a synopsis of The Paper Men when I should have given you a critique. Be patient then please.

First, I would say that the language Wilfred Barclay uses is often confusing, very much as was the case with William Golding's novel Darkness Visible. Once again I have to use the word cryptic, but in this case the main character is balancing his sceptic, rational (and often angry) views with his growing belief in some force greater than reason. In other words, something like God. No, I'm not making this up. Despite his atheist father, in his later years Golding saw himself as Christian, though he did not subscribe to any particular denomination even though for years he taught in an Anglican boys' schools. Note in this novel the references to Padre Pio and the churches in Italy.

Second, The Paper Men was written after Golding had won his Nobel Prize, and he was getting mighty sick of having academics and others knocking on his door or asking if they could have an interview or maybe even asking if they could write his life story. At the same time, he took a shine to a young American woman who wanted to write his biography. He was in his seventies. They did not have an affair, but his wife politely asked her to go away. She went. [This I know from a B.B.C. documentary in which Golding's daughter discussed the situation.] Much of the thrust of The Paper Men is Golding's disgust at the way journalists, academics and others misunderstood what his novels were really about. By the way, in the novel Wilfred Barclay says he hates London. This was what Golding also thought. He much preferred the small towns and rural areas - and of course sailing.