Wolf Solent

In this novel by John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), Wolf Solent is a 35 year old Englishman, living with his mother in London and leading an obscure life as a History instructor at a small school. At the beginning of the novel he is on a train back to his childhood home of Dorsetshire, at the invitation of a local Squire who need assistance in compiling a scandalous history of the vicinity.

Solent is, to say the least, a hyper-sensitive individual. He wants to get away to the country, away from aeroplanes and the nuisances of modern life. Since childhood, he has lived a mostly interior life occupied with his own peculiar "mythology", but he wants an authentic, sensual existence. His life is overwhelmingly an interior affair, and much of the book is taken up with the turbulent thoughts in Solent's head as he wanders the Dorset countryside, burying his face in the local flora and inserting himself into the lives of the locals.

Wolf's father, who died some 25 years previously, was the local rogue, dying in the neighborhood workhouse with "Christ! I've enjoyed my life!" as his last words. William Solent had an open extramarital affair with Selena Gault, the ugliest woman in town, and fathered at least one illegitimate child, now a woman to whom Wolf forms a strangely affectionate attraction. He also has a strangely affectionate attraction to her betrothed, but that's another thread in the fabric of this story. Wof appears determined to follow his father's footsteps, releasing himself from the suppressed life he has lived with his mother. On the train, he fantasizes about seducing the local girls,"white as a peeled willow wand", among the elder-bushes.

He wastes no time falling for Gerda Torp, the young beauty who is the daughter of the local headstone carver. His erotic sensibilities are influenced by the unseen existence of a photo of Gerda suggestively straddling a headstone in her father's yard, and by her uncanny ability to imitate the whistles of the blackbird and plover. No sooner has he bedded her in a pile of bracken in an old cow-barn, with a promise of marriage, than he meets his true soul mate in the form of the introvert Christie Malakite, who lives a circumscribed existence immersed in works of literature and philosophy, above her father's dirty book shop. Oh fate!

Wolf's obsession with Christie and the imminent collapse of his personal mythology as his life becomes intertwined with those around him forms the bulk of this massive book. In the hands of Thomas Hardy, this would have been a pretty straightforward affair, but Powys has a lot of words in him and is not afraid to use them. The novel is dense with descriptions of Wolf's interminable walks and the vegetation that he encounters. Life in its vegetative ripeness and its inevitable decay permeates the book. And under the fertile ground is the death's head of his father, grinning sardonically at the foolish indecisiveness of his son, a Yorick mocking Hamlet. The arrival of Wolf's mother, not one to let the apronstrings become overstretched, complicates matters: Wolf is as much Oedipus as Hamlet.

The supporting characters are a queer lot: Squire Urquhart, a nasty old man whom Wolf tends to see as evil incarnate; the tippling homosexual parson, Tilly-Valley; Jason Otter, the sensitive poet who seems to know Wolf's motivations better than he does himself; Christie's incestuous father; Urquhart's valet, whom Wolf imagines naked in his dirtiness; and Bob Weevil, whom Wolf suspects of cuckolding him. There is also Redfern, the deceased former secretary of Urquhart, in a shallow grave in the cemetery and over whom most of the male characters share some unshakeable obsession.

Powys imagined his book as illustrative of the necessity of opposites and an examination of "the whole mysterious essence of human life upon earth, the mystery of consciousness." My edition is one of the older Penguin Modern Classics, not the more recent volume with A.N. Wilson's introduction, so I don't have the benefit of Wilson's insights. I get the whole "necessity of opposites" thing, as well as the underlying vegetation/sexuality (dark, moist, hidden) thing. I suppose I enjoyed it, but really, this book is like "Twin Peaks", only with a lot of tea and no dancing midgets.

Wolf Solent was the first of Powys' novels, and generally regarded as his best. He is not easy to slog through, and God knows I've tried. Among his other works are A Glastonbury Romance (which I hope to read before I die, but not too soon), a massive Autobiography, and a self-help book called The Philosophy of Solitude. I enjoy dipping into the latter two volumes from time to time but I can really only take him in small doses. He was truly an idiosyncratic writer and, despite a life lived mostly in the United States, a true English eccentric.

A Few Miles of Bad Road

Umberto Eco has a new book called On Ugliness. Good review in the NYT Book Review yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Finnerty-t.html

Looks like an ideal Christmas gift.

Neglected Books

I have added a link to a wonderful site called Neglected Books. I like to think that this is the site I would have created if I had the proper time, energy, and erudition.

Independent People

For anyone bracing themselves for long cold winter nights, Halldor Laxness's Independent People makes good reading. I actually read this book in December 1999, outside on the deck of our home in suburban Maryland, late at night with a pipe and snow falling all around. This is probably the optimal method for reading a book set in the isolated frozen wastes of Iceland.

Independent people is the story of an obstinant Icelandic sheep rancher's struggle for independence against time, the elements, family responsibility, and an evolving economic system. For Bjartur, nothing is as important as his land and the sheep upon it, for in his thinking, the land represents true freedom. Wives die, children are lost, and eventually the ranch itself comes to ruin as a result of Bjartur's inability to see beyond the tip of his nose. As with most pioneers, there is a certain insanity in him, and a mad touch of the heroic.

One feels that Bjartur survives a harrowing ordeal in the frozen wasteland (as his wife is dying in childbirth at home) not by heroism, but by the fact that he is so single-mindedly obsessed with his dream of independence that he simply does not consider the fact that he should not be able to live through the night. The tale is a tragic one - for all its simplicity, Bjartur's dream is crushed in the end by his inability to adapt to a changing world. The other characters, especially the girl Asta Sollija, are drawn with depth and care. There is a touch of the comical in this novel, but there is mostly - almost unbearable in parts - tragic sorrow in the life of this man and those he dominates.

I was fortunate to find and read an English translation of this book some years ago. I see that a more recent edition is now available. Pleased to know that it is back in print.

Book Notes on LibraryThing

For anyone out there who might enjoy my writing on books (rather than my leftie rants), you may be interested to know that I have begun to cross post some of my book notes from this blog to my LibraryThing catalog (accessible as "reviews" on the Makifat profile page). I am also posting shorter reviews of books read that I have written in my notebooks, but which I have felt aren't substantial enough to note on this blog.

The LibraryThing cataloging continues, slowly and surely. I should pass 3000 books sometime tomorrow, but there is still a long way to go until I have entered my entire library.

The Manuscript Found at Saragossa

As a student in the early 80's, I saw a film at the local art house that was quite unlike anything I'd seen before. It was foreign, black and white, and featured (in addition to scantily clad temptresses) seemingly innumerable stories within stories, a narrative Chinese box, all in a quite fantastic vein. The name of the film escaped me for years, but it remained as a tantalizing memory. No one I spoke to seems to have any recollection of the film, and I wondered if it had been a dream after all.

A few years ago there was a new translation of a book entitled The Manuscript Found at Saragossa by Polish author Jan Potocki. This novel is comprised of interlocking stories within stories, gothic and surreal. Set in Spain's Sierra Morena mountains in the early years of the 18th century, the intricate stories make generous use of the elements of hermetic and kabbalistic teachings, as well as Islamic history and the horrors of the Inquisition.

Potocki knew the detailed history of the time and sprinkled his narrative with actual persons and events. He created in this novel a subterranean twilight world, where secretive Moorish sheiks hoard incredible wealth and scheme for the continuance of their hereditary authority in the hidden realm.

Van Worden, the narrator, is manipulated throughout to serve the purposes of a distant relation, the Sheik of the Gomelez. He accomplishes this through tests of character, through the intricate web of stories (including the tale of the Wandering Jew, a popular gothic motif - see also Melmoth the Wanderer and Eugene Sue's eponymous novel), and through, not least, the erotic attractions of two nubile Moorish princesses. A recurring episode pertains to some criminal corpses, hanging near a crossroads, that seem to be resurrected with an almost comic consistency.

The disparate narratives weave together in the final pages. Van Worden learns the object of his manipulation, but is greatly rewarded for providing an heir to the Sheik. The object of the Sheik is a plan for Moorish world domination, a foreshadowing of the anti-semitic and discredited "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Conspiracy theorists, alas, have always been with us.

And of course, while reading this novel, back in 2001, my mind was struck by similarities to a film I had seen many years before. The film? The 1965 production of "The Saragossa Manuscript", which I now own on DVD. Both the book and the film are wonderfully imagined works of art.

Nobel Prize Winner

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I hadn't really been paying much attention to this possibility, but it's a nice acknowledgement of the work he's done to raise awareness of global warming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/13nobel.html?hp

And how, pray tell, do the right-wingers react? With a sense of pride for a fellow American?

Sorry, no. A perusal of the comments on the Times article reveal, amidst the general feeling of appreciation of Gore's work, the sour grapes of the right ("questionable science", "Jimmy Carter", and the personal attacks they have internalized by parroting Limbaugh for all these years). Well he won it, they didn't, and it's too late to expect any graciousness from the knuckle-draggers.

In the context of American anti-intellectualism, the ignorant masses always resent the educated. They prefer the so-called "man of action" to the person who procedes based on reasonable judgement. Look where seven years of a "man of action" have gotten us: dissatifaction at home and hatred for us around the world. Gore's honor at least serves to remind the world that there are still some decent Americans left.

Penguin Modern Classics

One of the joys of book collecting is an increased appreciation of graphic design and how it evolves over the years. Penguin Books have had one of the most interesting evolutions in the publishing world. You can't tell a book by its cover, but the quality of Penguin texts married with excellent design standards makes Penguin Books a reliable source of good (and good looking) literature.

I have collected the "old style" Penguin Modern Classics for years. Many of the ones I have are UK editions which were never for sale in this country. I am currently entering my collection into my LibraryThing catalogue.

Today I came across a collection of covers from the most recent incarnation of this series. Lots of use of photography, which gives them a nice clean look. Not a tremendous amount of overlap with the old series, so maybe I should start a new collection....

For a look at the new covers, go to:

http://www.erasing.org/etc/penguin/modern_classics_uk.html

Beloved

I began this blog because I wanted to write about out-of-the-mainstream books I've read. I have finally gotten around to reading Beloved by Toni Morrison. This book has become part of the modern canon, and is hardly obscure, so I'll skip a lengthy plot summary. The novel, in case you aren't familiar with it, is a story of the violence and degradation of slave life and the scars carried by those who labored and suffered under that system long after it ceased to exist as an institution.

Beloved is the story of Sethe and her family, who reach Cincinatti via the Underground Railroad and build a post-war life there, haunted by the past in the form of the child Sethe has murdered rather than submit to a life of slavery. As a story of human sorrow and strength, it could be a story from the Holocaust, from Kosovo or Iraq or any number of the disasters of human degradation that have plagued our history. It is a story about dealing with wrenching loss and humiliation, finding one's way when one has plumbed the depths of despair. It is a cry from those who historically have had no voice at all.

A consertative commentator recently wrote a column trying to explain why slavery "wasn't all bad". The sheer idiocy of making such a statement in the 21st century shows how disconnected we have become from disturbing historical realities. Give him another 25 years, and Michael Medved and his ilk could be the next wave of Holocaust deniers. After all, once the witnesses are gone, we can make up any story we like about the past, can't we?

A novel is not a historical record, but a well written novel can give insights into the human condition and give some voice to those who have not been heard. I don't know the genesis of Ms. Morrison's novel, whether it is based on any known historical incident, but it stands as a voice or an echo from a people who lived and died in a shameful, immoral system that mocked our ideals that "all men are created equal."

Two "Gnostic" Gospels

As a teenager, I read a Borges story called "The Theologians", the first sentences of which describe an early Christian who crushed his son under an immense weight so that his double could fly in Heaven. This piece of fiction was my first awareness that there were different strains of Christianity in the first centuries A.D., some of which were radically different from what we conceive as mainstream Christian thought. G. R. S. Mead's eminently enjoyable Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, published long before the discoveries at Nag Hammadi and obsolete from a scholarly standpoint, gave me further insights into the versions of Christianity heavily influenced by Neoplatonism and lumped together under the term "Gnostic".


Since reading those works so long ago, a treasure trove of texts and interpretations of Gnostic literature has been published, the cornerstone of which is Elaine Pagels' seminal The Gnostic Gospels. Over the last several years, scholars have shied away from the use of the designation "Gnostic", as it implies a uniformity of belief that did not exist in those early heterodox centuries. What is clear is that the mainstream Church, in consolidating its power, perceived any Christian belief which advocated direct apprehension of God, without the Church as intermediary, as a threat to its authority. Of the many Gospels and other writings floating around which did not support the Church narrative they had great distrust, and actively sought their elimination. They did a remarkably thorough job supressing these texts, most of which were known up until the 20th century only by their inclusion in writings by Church fathers such as Irenaeus, who quoted them only to refute them. Discoveries at Nag Hammadi and elsewhere have served to correct these deficiencies by revealing, at long last, many of the original texts.


I don't have a dog in this fight. Studying the history of the early Church and particularly the Neoplatonic versions of Christianity is, for me, a fun Borgesian pastime and a good illustration of how all history must be viewed with a skeptical eye, as it is a truism that history is written by the victors. If not for the discoveries of Nag Hammadi, our view of the development of the cultural phenomenon of Christianity would be much different. The upheavals and violence of the Albigensian Crusade, the Inquisition, and the Protestant Reformation have clear antecedents in the Church's response to the Gnostic heresies.


My notes on the Thomas Gospel are a few years old, but I thought it made sense to present them together with a review of Pagels' more recent book.

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels

The Gospel of Thomas was one of the "heretical" texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940's. Of the many works found at that time, it has excited the most interest due to both its parallels and divergences from the four canonical Gospels. The synoptic Gospels tell a similar story, however, the Gospel of John is quite different in its style, themes, and interpretations of the meaning of Jesus. John is the only gospel to directly imply that Jesus was in fact God.

Pagel's contention is that John may have been written to specifically "correct" the ideas about Jesus presented in the suppressed Gospel of Thomas. Thomas presents Jesus as divine, but encouraging others to look to the divine within themselves, to "drink from my mouth and become what I am." The Gospel of John was written to reinforce the idea, becoming orthodox in the first century, that one does not share in divinity, but comes to it through the sacrifice of Jesus, the one son of God. Pagels devotes much of Beyond Belief to describing how the church father Irenaeus sought to suppress all but the "authorized" Gospels as a means of fostering orthodoxy and eliminating innovation and error. Beyond Belief ends with the familiar story of Constantine and the Council of Nicea, which solidified the creed of the early church and established the authorized New Testament.


Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

The Gospel of Judas, known previously only through the refutation of Irenaeus, is a quite recent discovery, only becoming public last year. In a theme worthy of Borges, it presents the arch-traitor Judas as the most beloved of Christ's disciples - the only one who understands Jesus' true mission and the transcendent reality of the kingdom of God.

Judas has always presented a problem for the Church. It is through his agency that Christ is betrayed and crucified, necessary steps towards the redeeming event of the resurrection. Yet Judas is reviled as being possessed by Satan himself, an agent of pure evil. More recently, Judas has been posited as a proto-Zionist, knife at the ready, who betrays Jesus as soon as he realizes that he has not come as a messianic king to defeat the Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel.

Pagels and King see the Judas in this text as a mouthpiece for criticism of the cult of martyrdom, the thirst for the opportunity to "die in glory for the Lord" so prevalent in the early church. There is also a certain amount of mystical theology thrown in as well (the "Gnostic" idea that Jesus is an emissary of the true God, who reigns above the demiurge responsible for the creation of the physical universe). The text contained in this volume and the interpretations provided by Pagels and King are a worthy addition to the expanding literature of the early Christian era.

Links

I have finally gotten around to starting a list of links over there to the right.

Jurassic Pork at Pottersville is always on the mark with essays that challenge the short attention span zeitgeist. In an ideal world, his essays would be on the front of all our major metropolitan newspapers (although in an ideal world, that wouldn't be necessary). I recommend TBogg for his own brand of insight, and for a really great sense of humor. He reminds me of myself, back when I still had a sense of humor that scared the living shit out of my adversaries.

I'll build the list as I go along. It will be dedicated to meaningful sites that I visit frequently. Except Atrios. God knows why I still visit him frequently. Heh, Indeedy.

The Quiet American

Last month, in a speech on Iraq policy, George Bush made a curiously muddled reference to Alden Pyle, the "quiet" American intelligence officer featured in Graham Greene's novel. Greene's portrait of Pyle is not a flattering one: he is an immensely naive, unworldly young man ready to remake the world in the image of American democracy. While doing my LibraryThing cataloging, I came across this book last week and decided to reread it in light of Bush's comment and the obvious parallels with the Iraq situation.

Clearly, Bush has either not read this book or is a terribly poor reader. Pyle, in his misguided attempt to enable the fermentation of democracy in Vietnam (ca. early 1950's), facilitates a terrorist act that leaves civilians dead or maimed (the chapter describing the explosion and its aftermath are classic Greene). Pyle, as a neophyte to carnage, is shocked by the result of his actions, but is undeterred, rationalizing that the civilians "died for democracy".

Greene's book shows the Americans bumbling into the French colonial disaster in Southeast Asia, but in essence this provides a background to the moral awakening of the "narrator", Thomas Fowler, the British correspondent who keeps a Vietnamese mistress while trying to stay uninvolved in the political situation. Fowler's contempt for Pyle - who in addition to his subversive activities has tried to "liberate" Fowler's mistress as well - ultimately leads to his abandoning his moral ambivalence. Although Pyle had in fact saved his life in the course of a nighttime attack in the Vietnamese countryside, Fowler assists in luring Pyle into an ambush in which he is murdered. Did Fowler make the decision to let Pyle be killed because of his recklessness in fomenting deadly unrest, because of his contempt for his naivete, or because of Pyle's attempts to seduce Phong away from him?

In the end, Fowler's own hypocrisies and fears are exposed - a self-awakening for which Pyle is the catalyst. But Pyle is no hero. Despite his "quietness", he is a dangerous man - a man without understanding who attempts to remake the world according to his own ideal.