The Novel That Came in for the Win

There are a number of reasons, I think, that John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold made it on to this list. 

First, the book marked a shift in the spy novel genre.  By the time Le Carre began writing his bestseller, Ian Flemming had already published seven James Bond novels.  The spy as international man of mystery was already a glamorous public figure.  Alec Leamas, the protagonist in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, is no James Bond.  He’s aging, he’s angry, he’s rough around the edges, and he never once draws a gun or uses a gadget.  There are no casinos, no femme fatales, and no mysterious villains with odd behaviors and plans to destroy the free world.  Everything about the novel makes spy work look like a dirty and unpleasant job.  When the book was published, it made huge waves and was hailed as a genuine look at the spy game in an increasingly tense cold war.  In spite of Le Carre’s protestations, reviewers treated the book as though it revealed dark secrets against the wishes of the intelligence community because the book got at some ugly truths.  The novel provided a much need counterpoint in the genre and set a new standard for spy stories.

Second, the book is short and sharp.  My edition is 225 pages long, and I read it in about three days, which is very quick for my slow-reading self.  But even in its brevity, the novel manages to make the reader not feel short-changed on anything.  The characters are quickly drawn, but they are full characters with the complete feeling of depth and a life that goes beyond the pages on which they are printed.  The relationships and exchanges echo in the deep well of a suggested past.  It may be only the illusion of depth, but as a reader, I never felt cheated.  In this same vein, the story moved quickly without leaving out needed details or leaving questions unanswered. While the prose didn’t send me running to Facebook to update quote after quote, it was sharp and controlled, admirably well written without ever seeming “beautiful” or pretentious.  Any more florid of a style would have been out of place with the moral landscape of the world Le Carre created.  And like the characters and the prose, the plot was deceptively simple too.  There were no twists and turns leading to an explosive climax, no red herrings leading Leamas down fruitless paths, no minor characters with their own agendas that interfere with Leamas’s objectives.  And once again Le Carre turns this simplicity into a strength, propelling his plot with a singular focus that is absorbing and compelling.  The one twist it gives is a whammy and more than enough to reward the reader.  At every turn Le Carre make simplicity a power.

Third, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a morally ambiguous mess, as one can only imagine intelligence, counter-intelligence, and matters of national security necessarily are.  Again and again we are told that the only thing that matters in the intelligence game is results.  The ends always justify the means.  If bodies of the innocent stack up on the roadside in order to protect the “greater good,” then so be it.  This all comes beautifully to a head in the penultimate chapter when Liz and Leamas argue over the roles they have played in this spy game.  Liz clings to her understanding of right and wrong as Leamas angrily attempts to explain the murkiness of it all.  He simultaneously rejects and embraces what he is saying, and we as readers are stuck in the middle with Leamas.  It is an ugly position to be put in, but one that we always knew was there.  The complications of the intelligence world are made plain and made to be felt, which is really all that any reader could ask for.  And this simple presentation of a complex situation is precisely why reviewers in 1962 felt that they were being given an inside look into something they were never supposed to see.   Even Le Carre’s portrayal of Liz and the British Communist Party is surprisingly gentle in the heart of the cold war.  The novel does not in any way endorse communism, but it has an understanding of the everyday people who embrace its on-the-face message of peace and equality.  And the criticisms it lays against the Party at the highest levels are equally laid against the leaders of the British intelligence community, as both powers are presented as ruthless and without a moral compass.  That too, I think, contributed to the book’s reception as an expose of ugly truths.

My only disappointment in the novel was the strain of sexism that ran through it.  Leamas shock at and distaste for any woman in a position of power (I’m thinking of Miss Crail and the presiding judge at the tribunal) are not subtle.  The female warden who is in charge of Liz is an unthinking and unquestioning buffoon of sorts.  And Liz herself is a rather sorry figure, even as she is the moral center of the novel.  At 23, she is alone and unloved, naively embracing the communist’s “historical inevitability.”  The only man for her is a 50-year-old gruff partner who offers her nothing emotionally, but to whom she devotes herself whole-heartedly.  She is, as Leamas says, “a frustrated little girl,” and that’s about all the respect she gets from anyone.

But for the short shrift given to Liz, this is a fantastic novel.

A Dance to the Music of Time - Book IX - The Military Philosphers

I have not read a lot of books about World War II, either fiction of non-fiction, and didn’t know what to expect heading into the three-part section of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time that dealt with the war years.  The novels up to book VII, which begins Britain’s involvement in the war, while ranging near and far in Nick’s travels into manhood, were mostly in the style of novels of manners, so I was interested to see if we were thrown into the thick of battle or if the style persisted.

Given that Nick and his friends were deep in their thirties when the war began, they were not placed anywhere on the front lines.  In fact, Nick worried about how he could enlist quickly given the handicap of his age.  Nick did manage to enlist, and after working in different posts in England through books VII and VIII came into the lasting position of his military career in Book IX, that of managing the attaches from first Poland and then Norway and Belgium.  These final positions had him stationed in London. 

As a result of these matters, Powell is able to maintain his tone and style even as the war rages on in the form of blitzes and the reports of those who have fallen.  Not only does it suit Powell’s style, but it’s also a fascinating way to recount the war.  Of these last three books, the second one, The Soldier’s Art, was to me the most enjoyable because we spent the most time with characters we had been following before the war broke out.  But this latest book, book IX, The Military Philosophers, was the most interesting from an historical perspective.  So little time can be devoted to the war in our history classes that we really only get the highlights of the big moments in the war.  I had never even given thought to the political relationship between the greater powers and those of the smaller countries on the side of the Allies.  Powell’s focus is always on the movement of time and people, so he does not spend a lot of time uncovering the lives and political nuances of the situation, and while his coverage is sufficient to let us know the general ins and outs of Nick’s life, I found the quick skim over the surface of things made it difficult to really submerge myself in the fiction.  Because we weren’t diving down, I found myself becoming impatient and wanting to rush through the chapters to find an encounter in which we could spend some time.

It can be tempting to rush through what seems like humdrum material in Powell’s books, and I needed constantly to remind myself to slow down for two reasons.  First, the prose is so beautifully constructed that it would be a waste to blow past the sentences in search of a chapter.  Second, Powell is writing something that is much larger than any one book, attempting to capture the very motions and patterns of life as we live it, which means things that are humdrum today can prove to be critical tomorrow.  Powell is not interested in wasting anyone’s time, least of all his own, and I have to believe that what is laid out for us here is important not only at the moment but also down the line.

Powell shows his power as an author most readily in his concluding chapters.  The final chapter of The Military Philosophers is not only the final chapter of this one book, but the final chapter of this trilogy on World War II.  The war’s ending is celebrated and the lives that were once pulled together begin once again to separate, and Powell takes his time beautifully gathering each thread and placing them together, revisiting once forgotten moments as Nick sorts his thoughts out about the last five years of his life.  It was a fantastic ending to three enjoyable, though at times tedious, books.

The Art of The Soldier's Art

The title for the eighth volume of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time comes from Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came:

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.

As a man calls for wine before he fights,

I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art;

One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Charles Stringham has wandered his way back in to Nicholas Jenkin’s life, this time as a waiter on the base where our narrator is stationed.  Stringham has sobered up and has entered an introspective period, wanting to do little more than think about life, both in general and his in particular.  Nick has worried a great deal about Stringham and worked what little influence he has to try to help his friend, but in the end Stringham is doing exactly what he wants.  It is Stringham who reads this passage from Browning to Nick near the end of the novel (Stringham has been reading Browning because he is one of Tuffy’s favorite authors, Tuffy Wheedon being his old caretaker, one-time lover, and the woman who helped him give up alcohol).

As I've said before, one of the challenges of reading each book in this series is to figure out what sort of guiding principles, if any, Powell uses to decide which stories he will tell in any given volume.  While he is certainly forced by the chronology of events and the need to set up narratives for later reaping, Powell of course has total control over his fictitious world and can reasonably do as he pleases.  So why these stories?  Why these stories in this volume?    I often turn to the title as an aid in determining Powell’s principles. 

In this case, everything about the titular line seems fitting.  In mid-1941, we are deep in Britain’s involvement in the Second World War.  Nick and all the other men in his life are involved in the war effort, most of them as soldiers, even if their posts are not glorious ones.  Even those who are not wearing a uniform are contributing.  Barnby is painting camouflage on buildings to preserve them from the raids, and Moreland’s musical career is tied directly to the war efforts.  Soldiers and arts.   

Art also has the meaning of deception and artifice, and part of the art in this novel are the maneuverings of Widmerpool, Farebrother, Stevens, and the other officers using their own arts to further their military career and hoped-for corresponding glory.  It is great fun getting to see Widmerpool in this new environment and to witness his strained relationship with Nick.

Of course the real meat of the Browning line is the first half: “Think first, fight afterwards,” which is the noble opposite of our American version, “shoot first, ask questions later,” or “kill them all, and let God sort it out.”  This is above all a book about thinking.  Nick’s experience with the war is not on the front lines.  We are not in tanks or in the thick of battle.  We experience the whole war so far on the home front—only not on the front at all.  The war touches the characters of the novel through the unpredictable raids and bombs dropped from unseen planes by unseen Germans.  The destruction arrives without warning and lives are snuffed out without ceremony.  There is no “fight” at all in these narratives.  Bombs fall and Aunt Molly dies.  Bombs fall and Bijou dies.  Bombs fall and Chips Lovell dies.  Bombs fall at Priscilla dies.  Bombs fall and whole buildings are erased from existence.  All there is to do in the world of the novel is think.

As Browning describes it, the art of the soldier is to be able to use the power of his pre-war memories to charge his batteries for the fight ahead, to use the memories of home to “set[] all to rights.”  This particular interpretation seems more like a theme for the entire series than for this particular volume.  The past revisits Nick again and again as people pass in and out of his vision, and his thoughts as a narrator are free to move forward and backward in time, jumping ahead to an untimely death, and back to recall similar and contrasting times to breathe new meaning into the present. 

Returning briefly to Stringham, his new incarnation is mesmerizing.  While his changes seem to unsettle Nick, they are brought to life so compellingly by Powell that the character is in turns heartbreaking (as when he says that he no longer falls in love with the world or anyone now that  he is permanently sober) and charming.  Powell is at his best bringing the little motions that define a character into sharp focus, and this novel has that power at every turn.  This is one of the better novels in the series.

The Valley of Bones - Book VII of A Dance to the Music of Time

With book VII in the twelve-part series of A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell brings us into the beginning of the war years.  It is early 1940, and Nick Jenkins, our narrator, has joined the British army where he begins his service as a platoon leader.   

The trouble with an epic tale that attempts to kick off the shackles of traditional plot is that it’s very hard to feel the import of any particular occurrence.  In fact, the whole idea that happenings have import at all is challenged by Powell’s series.  In a traditional novel, there are arcs in both plot and theme that shape the events.  In this series, Powell replaces those arcs with the crossing of paths.  The unifying force of the novel is the cast of characters that dance in and out of the narrator’s life.  As I’ve said in my other blogs about this series, this makes for both very interesting reading as well as  what sometimes feels at least like pointless reading.  Will all this add up to anything?  Is it critical in the long run to remember who is who and who did what?

Naturally, some of the books in the series are more riveting than others.  The Valley of Bones is one of the less riveting books.  It feels like Act One of a larger drama about to unfold throughout the three books of the third “movement” of the series (the edition I have groups the series into four sets of three and calls each set a “movement”).  The stage has been set for army life and for a new group of characters to come in and out of Nick’s life.    As for actual doings, not much that is exciting transpires.  Nick meets Jimmy Brent and learns about why Jean left Nick those many years ago.  There is a military exercise.  Nick is set up in Aldershot at the Anti-Gas school.  His brother-in-law Robert Toland dies in the war.  Priscilla is hit on by one of Nick’s military acquaintances, Odo Stevens.  Charles Stringham’s mother has left Buster in favor of Norman Chandler.  Dicky Umfraville becomes engaged to Frederica Budd.  I feel like I’m spreading gossip more than summarizing events in a novel.

To me, the weight of each book exists in relation to each other.  I find it hard to imagine someone reading the books as they were individually published over the twenty-plus years it took to write them.  Each book can technically stand on its own, but I can’t imagine what an uninteresting read it was when read by itself.  The writing is admirable and intelligent, and Nick is a fun guide through the world, but each book on its own has only a few wow moments and very little narrative drive.

So what’s Powell doing in this seventh book?  I don’t know.  The title, The Valley of Bones, is taken from a sermon delivered at the end of the first chapter.  Ironically the titular valley is not about those fallen in battle, but about the breathing of life into men already dead who will come together and build up an army.  Both life and death are sewn together in the one title—but what that adds up to, I can’t tell you.  Are the men here given new life by the coming of the war?  I don’t think so.  Is this about the romanticism of war in the early years?  That seems more likely, especially since Nick does not find army life especially agreeable to him. 

Age seems to be a recurring theme in the novel.  Nick is older than he should ideally be to join the army, and he engages either with other men in the same boat where age is concerned, like Captain Gwatkin, or with youthful men full of energy and zealousness, like Kedward.  Why is this age stuff here, beyond the general demands of realism?  Just as the war thrusts Britain into a new age, are Nick and his generation transitioning into a new stage of life, the middle age?

The same issues of class seem to be at play, as the army elevates those business minded individuals like Widmerpool, Sunny Farebrother, and the staff of erstwhile bankers.  Those who were once miners are now foot soldiers, however, and do not seem to be flying up the ranks.  There is movement in some quarters then and stagnation in others.

I’m not even at all sure that Powell thinks in terms of themes, though he does seem to know how to milk symbols and meaningful moments, so I can’t help believing that he is “saying” something in the end.  But I’m afraid I won’t have a handle on that until, appropriately enough, the end.

A Not-Working-for-Me Orange

A Clockwork Orange is a book that wears its moral on its sleeve:  we must be free to choose between good and evil, or we cease to be human at all.  It is a simple tale of the struggle between the individual and the capital-s State.  Burgess’s brilliant twist is to make the protagonist a fantastically despicable human being, and to give him a first-person voice.

In the first 7 chapters of the novel, Alex bullies a homeless drunk, leads the attack on an old man coming home from the library, robs a store and beats the owner, strikes up a battle with a rival group of teens, leads the gang rape of a woman and beats the tar out of her husband and makes him watch, rapes two ten-year-old girls, fights with his own gang to exert his dominance despite being the youngest member at 15 years old,  and breaks into an old woman’s home to rob her but ends up killing her instead.  At one moment, we think that there may be some hope for Alex as he tells us of his love for classical music, but our thinking is corrected when we learn that Alex loves the music because he fantasizes about all sorts of violence and rape as he listens to it.  Alex never displays sympathy or empathy for another human being, repeatedly portraying himself as the victim and disowning any responsibility for his own behavior when discussing it with others.  He is a sociopath and an awful human being.

But as the narrator, he brings us into his head and forces us into a kind of alignment with him.  After he undergoes the Ludovico Technique, he is at the whim of everyone he encounters, and of course he is but one font of violence in a world of violence.  Every character who is not busy being raped shows flashes of violence and a thirst for revenge, so the ability to commit an act of violence is necessary for survival in the world.  Even having witnessed all the horrors Alex committed, we feel uncomfortable with his powerlessness in the final sections of the book.  To his credit, Burgess never lets us forget Alex’s nature even as we are made to squirm by his punishment.  That is really where the power of the book lies, in the tension created by the conflict of two evils.  To protect the individual from the State, we must accept that we have to protect what is vile and rotten inside the individual.

I found the world interesting and the slang oddly compelling.  Alex has a great voice.  But in the end, the book felt flat to me.  Perhaps it is the baldness of its moral.  Perhaps it is that testosterone-filled narratives never do much for me even under the best of conditions.  Perhaps it was the inclusion of the 21^st chapter that Burgess uses the entirety of the 1986 introduction to the novel to discuss.  The final chapter of the book was not included in the original printing of the book in America, and Kubrick’s movie ends on the 20^th chapter as well.  This exclusion really chaps Burgess’s hide, because he feels the final chapter raises the novel from a “fable” to a “novel.”  In this final chapter, Alex, the sociopath who nevertheless has the right of moral choice, suddenly outgrows his childish ways, puts rape and murder behind him, and longs for a baby and a wife and a quieter life.  Ahh.  Isn’t that nice? Apparently if the state just gave him a little more time, he would have outgrown rape and murder, as all boys do.  Ugh.

I finished the book on the same day the Supreme Court ruled on the Hobby Lobby case, deciding that a closely held company can practice a religion and can deny basic medical rights to its female employees in the name of that very religion.  Judge Alito’s dismissal of what he characterizes as a vague issue of “gender equality” struck home for me what was so tiring about reading A Clockwork Orange today.  The men of the novel are doers and thinkers, the philosophers and subject of philosophy.  The women—well, they get raped and are the object of rape fantasies.  The only exception is Georgina in that final chapter, who is a giggling empty character, the object of a settling-down fantasy.  Hell, the two ten-year olds who are plied with alcohol and then raped serve no purpose whatsoever in the larger narrative.  They do not come back to visit Alex.  Indeed, while Alex seems to meet up in the final section with every man he met in the opening section, all the women are dead and gone.  In my current state, I find it hard to care about the moral Bugess tattoos on his novel’s chest  as I stand among the discarded and silent female bodies of the dead.  It’s the same vonny cal that’s been shoveled for years.  While Burgess’s novel is interesting and well written, I conclude that it lives on primarily because it (and Kubrick’s adaptation) made such an impact at the time of its release.