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 four or more years ago.
TWO SHORT BOOKS. “GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS” by Max Porter (first published 2015) ; “FOX” by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks (first published 2000)
When it comes to these “Something Olds”, you know my form by now don’t you? I usually bombard you with detailed summaries of fat novels (mainly from the 19th or early 20th centuries) – often novels of which you have never heard. But this time I’ve decided to break the mould. Here are comments on two short books, each of which may be read easily at one sitting. And each of which is well worth reading. Read both of them carefully and you realise that each is about intimate grown-up relationships, even if one is apparently a children’s picture-book.
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Published by Faber and Faber in 2015, Max Porter’s first book Grief is the Thing with Feathers, was an instant bestseller, was hailed with positive reviews, was later turned into a play, was translated into many languages and has been reprinted numerous times, so the odds are that you’ve already heard of it. It has been called a prose-poem, but in my book that means simply prose.
The title is a revision of Emily Dickinson’s line “Hope is the thing with feathers” – possibly a reference to angels. In Max Porter’s novella, Grief is a scrawny crow. The tale is told in three voices. A mother has died in an accident, leaving behind a grieving father and two young boys. The voices are Dad, The Boys and a Crow. Where does the Crow come from? It comes from Ted Hughes, to whom there are a number of references. Dad is attempting to be a scholar and is writing a book, for an obscure, minor publisher, to be called Ted Hughes’ Crow on the Couch: A wild analysis. Late in the tale, The Boys, with some sympathy for Dad, tell how Dad once went to a Ted Hughes symposium at Oxford. but found himself to be a little fish, overwhelmed by the academic types. Out of all this, one understands that as Dad grieves for his wife, he has probably conjured Crow out of his studies… and yet there are sequences where The Boys seem aware of Crow.
As Hughes died 1998, 17 years before Grief is the Thing with Feathers appeared, there was no controversy over the use of his name. Besides, Faber and Faber were also the publishers of Hughes and, for the record, Hughes was a devotee of Emily Dickinson and once edited a selection of her verse. To give the rest of this book’s backstory, note that Max Porter was not presenting an autobiographical narrative. His wife and children were in good health. He constructed Grief is the Thing with Feathers out of memories of his father dying when he was a young child.
This novella charts phases in grief, beginning with the initial shock and the not-always-helpful expressions of sympathy offered by well-meaning people. As Dad says early in the piece “The doorbell rang and I braced myself for more kindness” (p.4) Crow offers a more anarchic approach. To conquer grief, Crow pours into Dad’s mind horrific images of what could be, creating a virtual shock treatment. Crow offers to treat grief directly. Crow says blandly “I believe in the therapeutic method” (p.12) Dad is aware that his marriage was not always harmonious, but he still feels great loss, as in his realisation “We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers” (p.20)
In the first shock of loss, there is the tendency to see bereavement as a universal tragedy which should be honoured and grieved by all the world. The Boys say “There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis. There should be horrible levels of noise, completely foreign and inappropriate for our cosy London flat.” (p.14) This level of grief can tip over into the grandiose. Later in the text, Dad says “I wanted to build a hundred foot monument to her… Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her” etc. etc. But Crow responds “Eugh… you sound like a fridge magnet.” (p.50) The grandiose is deflated.
Then there is the phase of guilt, in which the bereaved accuse themselves of not being constant to the memory of the deceased; of beginning to forget the deceased; of letting their minds wander off into more trivial things. The Boys at first remember their mother mainly as an absence – the lack of the childcare they were used to. Something is missing. Later they try to tough it out, but are a tiny bit ashamed of their flippancy when they think they can find a substitute for their mother. The Boys say “We watched London and London offered us possible mothers in jeans and striped T-shirts and Ray-Bans, so we spotted them and liked the nasty insensitive self-harm of it. We were blasé with a babysitter who said ‘How can you laugh about it, it’s so sad?’ ” (p.66) Father too feels uneasy about himself as he seeks comfort in another woman.
Crow tells a number of fables and cautionary stories. The longest (on pp.54-58) has him driving away the demon of grief by sheer anarchic behaviour. This anarchy is really the fullness of life, where one thing happens after another as life continues and grief is gradually muted. And yet a level of real grief will always remain. Rebelling against the concept of “moving on” from Grief, Dad snaps “Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.” (p.99)
There is a sort of reconciliation to come, but the main effect of Grief is the Thing with Feathers is the pain of loss.
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Very different, but still very powerful, is the Australian children’s picture-book Fox, published in 2000. The text is by Margaret Wild, the images by Ron Brooks. I note that the blurb of the first edition I have says Fox is “a story that is as rich for adults as for children.”
Indeed it is.
Here is a very simple tale. In the Australian outback, Magpie’s wing is burnt and Magpie cannot fly. Magpie (who is referred to as “she”) is helped by Dog (“he”), who is blind in one eye. Dog says Magpie can “fly” again if she sits on his back while he runs. They become bonded partners. He becomes her wings and she becomes his full sight. But along comes Fox (“he”). Fox’s red coat is glamorous. Fox can run faster than dog. Magpie swears she will never desert dog. Magpie knows Fox smells of “rage and envy and loneliness”. But Fox says he can make her really feel she is flying and Magpie finally succumbs to Fox’s promises. She sits on Fox’s back and he runs far, far into the desert… where he dumps her and runs away, declaring “Now you and Dog will know what it is like to be truly alone”. And in the very last words of the book, we are told of the maimed Magpie “Slowly, jiggety-hop, she begins the long journey home.”
It is hard for an adult to read this text without seeing it as an adult story of seduction. Magpie (woman) is seduced by the flashy glamour of Fox (rootless delinquent man), coming back to herself only when she remembers the domestic security and reliability she has left behind in Dog (unglamorous husband or partner). This must be the true history of many affairs.
In Ron Brooks’ large, wide-page illustrations, Fox is certainly the most glamorous character in the book. Dog is an unglamorous mustardy brown. The red of Fox’s coat is carried over into the harsh redness of the desert into which Fox runs. And Ron Brooks presents the text in the form of naïve, childlike printing. Does this represent the clarity of a story which even children can understand. But if so, what is the message that is being presented? To beware of untrustworthy strangers, perhaps?
To me, Fox is as adult as a real children’s picture book can be.
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