Something New

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

                “THE BLACK MONK” by Charlotte Grimshaw  (Penguin, $NZ38:00)

 

The Black Monk is the first novel that Charlotte Grimshaw has produced since ten years ago. A prolific novelist, she has spent those ten years considering other matters, in particular the family she came from. In 2021 she produced The Mirror Book [reviewed in this blog] - non-fiction and giving a largely negative version of her parents, C.K.[Karl] Stead and his wife Kay. When I had read the first twenty pages or so of The Black Monk, I thought I was a very clever chap because I twigged that many of the main characters were really the Steads and their friends but given fictitious names. Before I crowed, however, my weekly copy of the N.Z. Listener arrived with a good review of The Black Monk by the very capable journalist Philip Matthews, and he hit most of the points that I was going to make.

So let me give you a simple synopsis of a part of The Black Monk.

Alice Lidell writes books for children. Alice is concerned that her brother Cedric [nicknamed “Ceddy” ] is becoming a hopeless addict and alcoholic. But when she tries to tell her parents about it, and pleads that they should do something about it, they say that Alice is being too concerned or even hysterical; and Cedric is fine. They deny the truth. But Cedric is getting worse.  Alice’s mother is Rula [as in “Ruler” – a domineering person], a would-be painter. Alice’s father Thom is an M.P. and is often away in Wellington. They are, in effect, in a state of denial.

Denial in the face of the obvious is what Charlotte Grimshaw said about her parents in The Mirror Book. Her mother Kay claimed that she wasn’t in the least upset by her husband Karl’s philandering… when in fact she was often desperately upset. She wanted to present her home as peaceful as befits a much admired academic and novelist and poet.

In The Black Monk, Alice Lidell tells us that her mother Rula often belittled her; and when Alice was a teenager Rula encouraged her to be a sort of teenage “rebel”, ridiculing teachers, consorting with deadbeats and getting into trouble. And Alice witnesses her gay friend Ezra being killed by a hit-and-run car. All this is almost the same in The Mirror Book.

So I could continue pointing out other characters who are important in The Black Monk, such as the psychotherapist Dr. Botherway [a deliberately amusing name] ; the German woman Javine who may be a friend of Alice but who is severe in tone and carries the guilt of having parents who had been Nazis; the cousin of Alice who is almost the same age as Alice and who can update her on doings in her family etc. But all this is not the core of the novel.

If Alice Lidell writes books for children, Charlotte Grimshaw writes for adults and much of The Black Monk is really her examination of her own mind, her attempt to understand what or who she is. Alice decides to write a book called The Black Monk and Charlotte Grimshaw is writing a book called The Black Monk. As I see it, this is a novel about a novelist who has sometimes lost reality and then has to look back and see if she has made a mistake. Did she really remember things accurately? Do novelists think they have heard  a conversation, made use of it in a novel, and then realise that it was merely something the author had made up? Then, of course, there is the matter of “the black monk” itself. Who or what is this? As used in this novel, it is a mysterious person who sometimes meets Alice especially when she is in distress and who then is no longer seen. Is this the man sometimes called Anton? Or is it simply another fantasy of the author? Sometimes also this novel refers to Jung’s idea of  “the shadow” within us – that is, the negative side of human beings, including our capacity to hurt other people, lie etc. but which we try to suppress.

I apologise in advance to Charlotte Grimshaw for my conclusion;  but I see this novel as largely an exercise in psychotherapy, gradually healing personal wounds. “Rula” [Kay], who blighted her young life, died in 2023. Charlotte’s older brother Oliver died in 2024. I do not know anything about how or why Oliver died so I am only guessing that he was the basis for  “Cedric”. But the healing comes towards the end when “Alice’s” mother “Rula” dies and “Alice” now sees her as somebody who had gone through hard times and who had some qualities to be admired.

Footnote: This thing about The Black Monk. The blurb reminded me that Charlotte Grimshaw had written a short story some years back called The Black Monk and now her novel of the same name. Both were inspired by a novella by Chekhov. The Black Monk was published in 1893. It concerns a young man called Kourin who has delusions of greatness. He tries to shake off his delusions by going to a rural area where he can cool down. But in the twilight he meets a black monk who questions his sanity. He believes he will save mankind… … but in the end his delusions kill him. Again, it’s up to Charlotte Grimshaw to interpret what the black monk means to her. But I think in this novel it signals how authors can also have grandiose ideas and mis-interpret what they had seen, just as “Alice” does.

 

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 LITTLE CHRONICLE OF MAGDALENA BACH” by Esther Meynell (First published under a pseudonym in 1924; then published in 1925 under her own name)

 

Very well – see me as an eccentric if you will, but I have this awful habit of  trying to catch up with books which have sat on my over-crowded shelves for eons and which I have never read. Case in point is Esther Meynell’s The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach. So I got to it and read it, sometimes while listening to CDs of Bach’s works. Is it a masterpiece? Not at all, but in its day it was very popular and sold very well. Who was Esther Meynell [born 1878 – died 1955]? Before she was married she was Esther Moorhouse, but she married a man whose cousins were the well-known literary Meynell family [I won’t go on about them]. She wrote many books, mainly guides to quaint rural areas, but she was also interested in classical music and she wrote a number of short books about composers. The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach is told in the first person by Magdalena, the second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach, who outlived him. The opening dedicates the book To All Who Love Johann Sebastian Bach. So here is the life of Bach as seen by his wife. And one interesting thing is that this novel, written by an English woman, was translated and published in Germany where it was also much admired. But, at the very end of the novel, there is what I would call a warning. It reads “Those familiar with the known and authenticated facts of Bach’s life will realise that certain episodes in this book are imaginary.” Ah yes. If we are alert we will realise that The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach is partly fiction. The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach was written by a prim and polite lady, Esther Meynell, whose tastes were more of the Romantic era rather than of the 20^th century. But let us be charitable. In its own way it is charming, and it does tell us much about Bach’s work and achievements.

Magdalena begins by telling us that she is writing after her husband has died at the age of 67. She is 57 years old and she lives in Leipzig. Bach’s first wife was Maria Barbara who had given birth to seven children, some of who had died in infancy, and Maria Barbara had also died. Magdalena tells us that the first time she saw Bach was when he was playing the great organ in St. Katharine’s Church in Hamburg where he was Capellmeister and, she says “his brilliance with the pedal-board was as though they were wings”. Magdalena’s father was a trumpeter and her family were all musicians. Magdalena herself was a soprano and had sung in royal courts. But she was unsure of Bach when he first spoke with her. She says “Now I could not claim that he was handsome – few of the Bachs are that – but he had a countenance that set forth the power of his mind.” [Page 11] In 1721 he proposed to her. They married. And from this point on, she speaks of Johann Sebastian Bach as if he is a saint. She also notes that, while she regarded his The Well-Tempered Clavichord as beautiful, he saw it as mere practice for his students.

Magdalena then goes back to talking about Bach when he was young and before she knew him. He was born in Eisenach. He wrote oratorios on Saints Matthew, John, Mark and Luke before she knew him. He always cried when he wrote about Golgotha. She first heard his St. Matthews Passion in Leipzig on Good Friday – but at first his St. Matthews Passion was not regarded as his best work. He learned Latin thoroughly, as every scholar then did, and life-long he read the works of Martin Luther. As a boy he had a fine voice as a choirboy.  As a youngster he played the violin in inns for pennies [or rather the German equivalent]. Soon he was adept at the Organ and he had the advantage of having “large hands” – meaning that he could spread his fingers across the key-board…. And while all this seems true, Magdalena can’t help telling us a sheer fantasy tale about young Bach being hungry and after a long walk and having no money or food, and he had to eat a fish that had been thrown out a window. And lo! The fish had swallowed a coin, so he was able to buy some real food…. Anyway, back to reality, Bach got his first post as an organist when he was 19, at Arnstdt. He was greatly impressed  by the chorales of Buxtehude which he heard at Lubeck but, she says, he once almost got into a fight when he was accosted in the street; and he also was very annoyed when a woman wanted him to set her mediocre poetry to music. And naturally he was often angry when choirboys did not practice. It was about this time that he married Maria Barbara. At the age of 22 he moved to Muhlhausen, then moved to the court of Duke Whilhelm of Saxe-Weimer, where he became the Court Organist. He greatly admired the music of Handel but Handel had moved to England – even though he was a Saxon too – and so he consoled himself by reading whatever scores of Handel he could get. He could be very severe with Organ builders who were lax and did not produce the type of sound that he demanded. He moved from Saxe-Weimer to Cothen -  and it was in Cothen that his first wife died.  

She turns to telling us of his life with her [Magdalena]. She says he sometimes smoked and sometimes he wrote works for Magdalena, but he was very diligent . She says: “Save for such brief interludes, through all our married life I never knew him to waste time, which he always said was one of the most precious gifts and would have to be accounted for before His throne. Day after day he taught, he composed, he conducted, he played the Organ, the clavier, the viola, and other instruments, he instructed his family, and whenever he had spare time he would read in the many books he had slowly collected, especially in those books of theology, which so interested him, though my weaker mind found them somewhat difficult, not to speak of some of them being in Latin.” [Page 35] Yet there were also times when: “There were certain things about him that made me afraid at times , especially at first – a rock-like sternness that underlaid his kindness, but more than all a strange longing he had all his busy life for the end, for death. I only glimpsed it now and then, for I think he felt it frightened me, and I was younger than he and much less brave.” [Page 61]. To put it another way, he was obsessed by the rule of God.

Magdalena looked after the surviving children of the late Maria Barbara, “So I had a complete little family to mother from the very first, and, owing probably to the kind example of their father, these young ones soon began to love me and to confide in me their little pleasures and troubles, though Friedemann, as the biggest boy and responsible companion of his father was at first a little more aloof from me.” [Page 74] Friedemann was to be a rascal in every way for the rest of his life – at one point, too tired to write a sonata commissioned for another city, he simply past off one of his father’s works as his own. Yet Friedemann and his brother Emanual were to be Bach’s greatest offspring. As Magdalena says, for years after her husband’s death, Friedemann and Emanual were admired more than the forgotten Johann Sebastian Bach…. and of course they are both still admired. Magdalena says Bach never wrote any music without showing his work to her before anybody else. As the years went by Magdalena gave birth to 13 children, so Bach had sired 20 children. But much later she says: “All this time our young family increased around us, though alas, when the cradle had been replenished it was so often made empty again by the grudging hand of death. There were times, I confess, when I felt it cruel to bear children but to lose them – all the hopes and love buried in the little graves beside which Sebastian and I have often stood hand in hand, silent.” [Page 159]. Child mortality was terribly common in the 18^th century - and earlier and later.

And at this point we have two of those rather too-true-to-be-true comments that Magdalena sometimes makes about Bach. She says of Bach “… he was deeply attached to his family, and cared much for the society of his children. Occasionally he would flare up if they made too great a noise with their playings when his mind was full of music…” [Page 78] She also says “Even in our bedchamber there was a clavichord and I have known him to rise up at midnight and, wrapping an old cloak about him, play very softly for an hour or more. It never disturbed the sleeping children, only sleeping their dreams….” [Page 181]. Frankly I can’t believe that Bach didn’t often blow his stack when his children were being rowdy as he was trying to write or compose, and I would be very surprised if some of his children didn’t like their father making noises when the midnight hour was approaching.

Bach and his large family left Lothen and went to live in Leipzig in 1723, where Bach spent his last 25 years. He was at first upset by the poor singers he was to direct and he found the main organ in Leipzig to be inadequate. He had difficulty with the boys at St.Thomas Schule, where he put down the law that every choir should have at least three trebles, three alti, three tenors and three basses, and they should all be scholars. He very nearly got into a fight with Herre Gorner who was playing the organ so badly that – says Magdalena – Bach  “flew into a rage, snatching off his wig, flung it at Gorner’s head, telling him that he could have done better to be a cobbler than an organist.”  Bach was interested in an early version of the pianoforte, but he rejected it because he found the hammer-action to have heaviness to the touch. He became the Director of the city’s Musical Union. He did not like amateurs who wanted to be given lessons when they had no talent, but he did take in many who did have at least a little talent.

Magdalena says “There was a curious contradiction about Sebastian: in the things of daily life he was careful and meticulous and economical, in the making of music he had a marvellous prodigality and richness. But it must not be forgotten that this richness, though truly the gift of God, was based on hard and unceasing work and study all his youth, indeed, fully until he was thirty years of age – or, I might say with greater truth, till the day of his death. His mind never slumbered in the lethargy of self-satisfaction, and he never ceased the task of revision of his music – he was engaged on that work of his dying – and I always felt the words of Ecclesiasticus belonging to him, ‘For a dream cometh through the multitude of business.’ ” [Page 150] There is no doubt that he was a very religious man. She lists all the major works that Bach had achieved. They were organ music, chamber music, church cantatas, great Latin Masses, five different sets of music related to Gospel accounts of Our Lord’s Passion, suites, partitas, and many others. But in his last years, he lost his sight. Being blind, he wasn’t able to perform in front of the King of Prussia in Berlin. He died on July 29, 1750.

I am not an expert on the life of Bach, so I accept most of what Esther Meynell says about the central facts of Bach’s life, and I found The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach    to be very informative in many ways as well as being very charming. But all the time I am aware that Magdalena’s writing was fiction – a diary that never was. I think it is likely that the lives of Bach and Magdalena with a very, very large family would have had more quarrels and arguments than Esther Meynell suggests. But it does not deter me from listening to more of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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

Footnote: I am a barbarian. I have never played a musical instrument and I cannot read musical notes. By contrast my wife teaches piano and she has to explain to me what certain musical terms mean. But one thing we have is our love for classical music… and good jazz. Sometimes I rile-up our [adult] children by telling them that the only music worth listening to is classical music and jazz – but of course I am a little bit of a hypocrite as there are some pop songs I like, not to mention old-time ditties and show tunes. Still, classical and jazz music are our greatest delight. And sometimes, when we are driving along in our car listening to the Concert Programme, we might come in halfway to a classical work, and then we play a game of seeing what the name of classical work is. Sometimes she gets it first and sometimes I get it first. So at least I know what classical music sounds like and am well acquainted with it. By the way, back in the 1960’s many jazz-men decided that Johann Sebastian Bach was one of their heroes. Old Bach, they said, was the first guy to really swing. Too true.

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.   

                      ANNOYING THINGS IN T.V. AND “SOCIAL MEDIA”                      

Yes I worry about these things. I’m sure there are some things worth watching and/or listening to on T.V. and “social media”, but most of the time we are confronted with sheer dross. Of course the answer is to turn off the switch, sit down and read a good book. But there are far too many things that seem to be worth watching. So in we plunge.

Consider first one part of  “social media” known as Facebook, originally intended to be a place where people could express their views and discuss things in a reasonable way. In no time it became a place where people would verbally shout or swear at each other with insults rather than with anything like a genuine debate. There are still occasionally some items in Facebook that are worth watching, including old interviews or clips from the works of some comedians. More likely, though, there is gossip about movie stars, statements about which film actor has the most money, long “biographies” about actors, and inane nonsense about which actor is  “the greatest of all time”. “Greatest of all time” is one of those phrases that  Facebook loves to use. Facebook is also notorious for using the wrong photo when writing about a well known person e.g. an article about the American actor Graham Green is presented with a photo of the English novelist Graham Green, a completely different person. It happens all the time. At the same time, let us remember that much of Facebook is put together by A.I. , so I suggest that we are really watching what robots have put together.

In fairness there are much better T.V. channels than Facebook, in which one can find intelligent debates, documentaries, matters of history, news, and worthwhile music. And remember there is always Al Jazeera to give you a far better balanced view of current international news than we get in New Zealand.

Speaking about T.V., tired of predictable British detective sagas we decided to look out for foreign T.V. shows on Netflix  – requiring sub-titles, and therefore probably turning away people who don’t like reading sub-titles. We hit on two very interesting  Spanish serials.

The first was “based on a true story”. That phrase is often misused; but this one seemed to stick with facts. It was El Caso Asunta [The Asunta Case], a case that was widely followed in Spain. A Spanish couple had adopted a young Asian girl; but the girl went missing. Her body was later found. She had obviously been murdered. Who was the culprit? The skill of the series was the way it examined not only the people who could have been the culprits, but it looked carefully into the psychology of the couple who had adopted the girl. The pace was slow but very believable.  Given that Spanish law is in some ways different from English or American law, it was interesting to see how carefully in the final court-room both defence and prosecution made good and careful cases. Almost documentary in part, but not stilted. Good watching.

The other Spanish T.V. series was a different kettle of fish. Respira  [Breathless] is set in a hospital in Valencia. It is crowded. It is lacking in space. It is a public hospital, not a wealthy private hospital. Patients all swarm in. The hospital has not been properly funded and there is growing anger among interns and some of the doctors. One outspoken surgeon is in favour of calling a strike… but there is the old dilemma. Do doctors have the right to leave patients untreated when the hospital is partly shut down? So far, so persuasive, and much of the hustle and worry of the hospital is believable. Some side issues are real issues. The gay doctor who foolishly has had sex with a younger man who might have had a contagious disease. The fact that the spokeswoman for the hospital is sceptic about the way the hospital is run; but as she has cancer she feels she should be treated in the public hospital rather than in a private hospital because she does not want  to be seen as a hypocrite. The way surgeons and other doctors are often extremely bossy when it comes to interns etc. etc. etc. So far so believable. Unfortunately the series very quickly falls into sheer soap-opera with love stories and very, very explicit sex scenes. And to make us even happier there are many, many close-up images of patients being sliced open during surgery so there is blood, blood, blood all over the place.  Maybe this could be called realism, but I do wonder how many viewers will be able to stand the course.

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.

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

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.

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

            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.