Escape From Suburbia

A review of 'The Unlimited Dream Company' by J. G. Ballard

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 18th. October 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1DM80IBNUFMQB?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

A disaffected aircraft cleaner and failed itinerant named `Blake' decides, on impulse, to steal a Cessna light aircraft. While flying over Shepperton, he has to put down in the Thames. He is, presumably, dead, but his death seems metaphoric. It's the end of a wrecked life and the start of something great and new, and so we have the start of a fantastic adventure. This Phoenix tale of fertility emerging from tragedy is a recurrent theme in J. G. Ballard's writing.

Actually, it's unclear whether `Blake' is really dead or traversing through this novel in some kind of dream (perhaps resulting from a comatic state), or indeed whether this is just a simple fantasy novel. I think the author is leaving that to the reader to decide, but I for one would favour the dream theory. Hints are given here and there. For instance, at one point Blake refers to "streamers of still flying blood" - suggesting that events are taking place within a dream. In the process of this `dream', `Blake' becomes what could best be described as a spiritual energy force, giving life to the dreary and humdrum suburban surroundings, which are terraformed miraculously at `Blake' sleight of hand into a veritable tropicopia, spawning all kinds of exotic flora and fauna, including brilliant tucans and flamingos and the type of snakes more usually seen in the jungle. `Blake' manages to exoticise the people of Shepperton too. They dream the same dreams as `Blake' and, like him, metamorphose into magnificent birds that are able to soar freely above Shepperton, and sea creatures that swim in the river, thus re-capturing the freedom from ordinariness that `Blake' sought when he first stole the Cessna.

The character `Blake' is also an obvious allusion to William Blake, the famous English poet. The religious, pagan and philosophic parables here are also fairly obvious, including heavy symbolic references to the creation myth (Adam and Eve), the karmic undulations of life, paganism, Buddhism and reincarnation; we are all one spirit force, united and in that way restricted - but our collective potential is, thus, `unlimited' in a quite literal sense. Ballard is well-known (and well-liked) as a surrealist author, and the sine qua non of that literary style is the avant-garde. While I certainly knew what to expect here, I must admit that I found much of the cutting-edge stuff in the middle part of the book - in which `Blake' describes his `sexual' fantasies - very difficult reading indeed. Some of it alluded to paedophilia. I suppose I am just a product of my time, but I am disgusted by that sort of thing and so I found those parts of the book nauseous - and I am by no means a sensitive soul or close-minded. On the other hand, I suppose this is a necessary element in the psychological journey that `Blake' has embarked on. Suffice it to say that the term 'polymorphous perversity' could have been invented to describe this novel.

Ballad himself lived in Shepperton and this probably influenced him greatly in writing this work but it's also perhaps important to note that Shepperton is, or at least was at the time this novel was written, a fairly ordinary, though affluent, middle-class suburb, with the added interesting feature of a film studio. I find the very ordinariness of the location quite significant to any analysis. The spiritualist and surrealist interpretation has been worn into cliché in the various reviews of this book: i.e. the protagonist's powers and bodhicitta state of mind puts him in touch with all sentient beings who desire and perfect awakening and enlightenment, etc. But what few - if any - discuss is any possible materialist meaning to be derived from this work. As he seeds life in various ways and also acts as the final repository of all life-forces which he sucks into himself, `Blake' is not just symbolically messianic, but also authoritative. What some might interpret as the exploration of sexual innocence, others might see as licentiousness, which can be used as a manipulative force by powerful figures in society. The jungle seems like a new world, representing the power of dreams in catalysing change, and the people of Shepperton begin to lose their inhibitions and attachment to material things. Only two characters in the novel, `Stark' (the zoo owner) and `Miriam St. Cloud' (a medical doctor) seem sufficiently strong-willed to resist Blake's life-force and are for a time immune to his persuasions. Blake is a sinister kind of demagogue. I must admit to having a very uneasy feeling about this book. One almost has the sense that `Blake' is on some kind of power trip. He does not tolerate disagreement or dissent from the other characters and is capable of quite shocking cruelty.

'Father Wingate', a hobbyist in palaeontology, provides Blake's moral counterpoint and a constant source of justification or encouragement of Blake's actions, no matter how immoral or depraved. When Blake in the end returns back into himself, like an Ouroboros, ready to be re-animated in the future, it is the fossil ground dug by 'Father Wingate' that he chooses. The oneiric `Blake' was able to fly anywhere, but in reality, `Blake' cannot leave and must return to the ground from whence he came, just as we cannot leave and are trapped in our armour-plated, concrete corpse called 'reality'. This may be what death is like and Blake's dream is what happens after death.

Ballard is the `author's author', a logophile whose prose is like word-poetry. Most who read these reviews and pick up a Ballard book will already be familiar with his style, his interest in the surreal and the avant-garde, but just in case you do not fall into that category, a friendly warning: while Ballard was a truly great writer, you should probably give him a miss if you are easily offended.

Truth, reality and Fate

A review of 'The Man in the High Castle' by Philip K. Dick

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 11th. October 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R29DH1BXHGBNL5?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

In the world of 'The Man In The High Castle', the Allies lost the Second World War. The victorious Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, control vast swathes of the planet. In North America, the stage for this novel, the two major powers - the Germans and Japanese - fight a shadow war of espial intrigue, which the various characters become caught up in one way or another, direct or indirectly, while grappling with the micro-realities of their lives. The author, Phillip K. Dick, invokes the I-Ching as a literary device to represent the mystery and randomness of Fate and perhaps also to reflect the disenfranchisement and debasement of the Western American characters in the face of their Oriental invaders. Dick also uses the classic meta-fictional device of the `novel within a novel', entitled 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy', authored by the fictitious `Hawthorne Abendsen'. This is so as to provide his characters with a vision of an attractive-seeming alternative reality, through what, to them, seems a recursive alternate history.

Most people who read this novel regard it as a work of alternate history, but I am not sure that is quite on the mark. The author seems more concerned here with alternative realities than alternate history. Confusingly, the only actual alternate history in this novel is Abendsen's fictitious book, in which the Allies win the Second World War but Britain rather than the USSR emerges as one of the two superpowers. This diversionary reflects the ahistoricity of Dick's entire perspective. The author's only genuine foray into history, such as it is, appears to be more inadvertent than intentional, and might even be something he came to regret. Whatever, Dick presents the reader with an uncomfortable intellectual dilemma concerning the malleability of history and whether we are being told the truth about our collective past. I suspect this was not the intention and that Dick - or his editor - would have preferred that we think about the malleability of the present instead, and wrap ourselves up in all kinds of Eastern mystical twaddle - here we have an alliance of Taoist Orientals, who, of course, are perfectly in mental harmony, balance and synchronicity, in a cold war against a bunch of Occidental Nazis who are, naturally, cold and mechanistic brutes, etc. ad nauseum. When it comes to the past, the author is an even more conventional thinker and falls into the standard-issue "evil Nazis" literary trope. It is this cleave, between Dick's philosophic analysis of, respectively, the past and the present, that I wish to explore in this review.

In all fairness, the Nazi theme is not the real substance of the novel and only provides a compelling backdrop (it could have been, literally, any thematic period in history), but still, Dick would later excuse his failure to produce a sequel on the absurd pretext that he just couldn't bear to go back and read about the Nazis again. The irony of this novel is that the author is the victim of his own abstruseness. No matter how hard he tries, Dick cannot distract us from the contentiousness of history. He rightly wants us to question the basis of reality and identity, but in doing so he is liable to lead the thoughtful, historically-literate reader to the opposite conclusions of those he might have intended. Were the "Nazis" as evil as they are presented, or at all? Are we being told the truth about our history, and thus do we really understand our present? These ironic discursions reflect the wider methods of intellectual control in our culture. The idea of questioning reality and identity is entirely accepted in a confused society. Thus, race-mixing, drug-taking, gender-bending and other distended meanderings are de rigeur and in keeping with our own contemporary cultural climate. But if you question history, or worse still (in the eyes of the cultural commissars) reaffirm standards of truth - which amount to altogether more concrete mental diversions -you are soon in trouble. I have the feeling that Dick would like us to take his pop history of the 20th. century at face value and not question his take on the "evil Nazis", but the thoughtful and inquisitive reader cannot but help `get into trouble' by doing so.

Too often, published history is treated as law when in fact what we `know' (in the sense of what is accepted interpretation) is nothing more than a filtered version of the truth. There is only one truth. That stark fact is uncomfortable for many people who prefer the fashionable postmodern rejection of all that is objective and absolute in the moral, social and academic senses, but the `post-structuralist' school and similar merely represent still more ways of `seeing' or interpreting truth, not the Truth itself. The notion that the German National Socialists were "evil" and that their victory would have led inevitably to a desertified brutocracy is very much in the realm of interpretation and speculation. Part of the problem is that, unfortunately, truth is often confused with `reality'. Reality is related to the truth, but is not the same. Reality is just our experience of truth and is therefore loaded with perspective. In our reality - and that of the characters in this novel - the Nazis were brutes. Yet the author wishes to remind us, correctly, that reality is personal, a perspective or interpretation.

The author achieves this partly through the viewpoint of the characters and their peradventures, and also through various symbolic devices. For instance, we are lead to believe (perhaps implicitly more than explicitly) that 'Abendsen' - the eponymous `The Man In The High Castle' - must live in some kind of grand, palatial residence. In fact, it turns out that he lives in a modest house and has a modest bearing, and one suspects that has always been the case. In another scene, two characters discuss the `historicity' of certain artefacts and the obsession among their Japanese customers for `genuine' Americana: in this case, a couple of cigarette lighters. One of the lighters was used by FDR, the other wasn't, yet they are both alike. How do we come to regard one with greater value than the other? Surely we can't do so on any rational basis as there is literally no material difference between the two cigarette lighters. It's just that one happened to be in the pocket of FDR at some point. As one of the characters, 'Wyndam-Matson', who is running the whole scam, says:- [quote]"...You can't tell which is which. There's no "mystical plasmic presence", no "aura" around it."[unquote] (p.66).

So Dick is trying to convey here the nonsense of placing historical value on artefacts. How is one object more `historic' than another, and more broadly, how can we say what is `real' or `genuine' and what isn't? This is all interesting material, yet at the same time I cannot help but feel that it seems a little facile. The point about the mysticism of historicity is well-made, but Dick seems to be suggesting that history itself is an entirely creative and indeterminate process rather than something `real'. I see this as nothing more than pseud plasticity. The reason people place historic value in objects and like to emphasise genuineness is in order to protect and preserve the past. The fact that an appearance of `genuineness' or `likeness' can be manufactured and faked is immaterial to the point. The characters in the above-mentioned exchange poke fun at the Japanese customers for their naïve fetishism - perhaps rightly so - but if there was no value in historicity, as Dick seems to believe, then we would be one step away from literally inventing the past, which is not actually what happens. It is true that reality is questionable, but the behaviour of the Japanese is, if anything, an example of the opposite pressures, of trying to cling on to the more objective aspects of reality because they know of it. That is, perhaps, a reason for the traditional human totemic affiliation with inanimate objects, and maybe also reflects a kind of fetishism about objects (see, for instance, Marx's `commodity fetishism'), but in the end the explanation of wanting to `hold on to history' and valuing the historicity of the object - "aura" or not - is as simple as acknowledging an important part of history which, if it is to have meaning, should not be permitted to slip into the irrationally extreme relativism that Dick posits.

Dick's heavily relativistic perspective on reality, in which everything is uncertain and entirely personal, has other slippages of logic. It leads to slightly related and equally fashionable, but cringe-worthy notions, such as `the personal is political' and so on. The idea of the `personal is political' I think underlines much of the message in this novel. In Dick's mind, the personal struggles of characters are the political reality and thus reality is whatever is perceived and whatever is the political climate reflects this self-directed reality. These types of self-defining associations of course contain some provisional truths. Nevertheless, they are, at bottom, symptomatic of a certain feeble-mindedness among decadent writers and academics who overlook the mediation between reality and truth. Dick is, to an extent, right: reality is personal - but that is not all there is to reality. Eventually, reality has to have its showdown with the Truth, with the objective world outside of the self, the counterpoise of our inner selves. We all know this intuitively because it is part of a common experience. At some stage, we all have to come to terms with ourselves: to be `true to yourself', a kind of meta-awareness that is characteristic of relative maturity, in which narrow child-like solipsism is abandoned.

Throughout The Man In The High Castle, political issues of identity intrude on characters' private and personal lives and disturb their solipsistic bliss, deciding their respective fates because identity is real - it is `the truth'. In this sense, the social concept of `identity' can be re-conceptualised geologically in terms of a `rock'. Much like individual rock, discrete identities are inchoate and can erode and change in form over time, but the underlying `geologic truth' is unchangeable: human beings organise socially into both imposed and self-directed identities. At different points in this novel, each character has the necessary psychological reckoning as they come up against this rock-like truth. Thus we can see reality as both personal and also as reflecting certain truths about human nature and the way societies work. Identity, then, is the anchor for each character to the more objective realm, a link to reality and the truth of his or her existence. Typically, a character will emerge from a provocative or enlightening dialogue or a period of fugue into a brief few moments of lucidity in which the truth becomes evident.

In the case of `Robert Childan', a white man [but notice the Japanese-type spelling of the surname - in the novel, he speaks and `thinks' `Japanesey' too], and dealer in memorabilia, the revelation comes from interaction with dominant colonising Japanese:-

[quote] "Face facts. I'm trying to pretend that these Japanese and I are alike. But observe: even when I burst out as to my gratification that they won the war, that my nation lost - there's still no common ground. What words mean to me is sharp contrast vis-à-vis them. Their brains are different. Souls likewise."[unquote] [p.112]. 'Childan', though he is white and mentally Western, speaks and even thinks in a Japanese way, albeit he is clearly resisting this sinister acculturation.

`Frank Fink', a crypto-Jewish dealer in memorabilia, but also a proud cultural American, meets his `rock' in the most brutal fashion. `Tagomi', an industrialist, has a weird moment of fugue in which he confronts the `other reality' and its harsh social facts.

Perhaps the most interesting character is `Mr. Baynes', another crypto-Jew who travels to the United States from Germany and meets certain Japanese, including 'Tagomi', eventually revealing certain important, but hitherto concealed, facts about himself. `Baynes' cannot hide his true identity for long. On his arrival in the United States, he makes an explosive and incriminating admission to a complete stranger at the airport, just for the heck of it. Tagomi also senses the double concealment when they finally meet, feeling that something is not quite `German' about `Baynes'. So the truth cannot be hidden forever, even by `Baynes' - I am who I am, you are who you are, we are who we are, and either we will let spill on our own initiative, or we will be found out. Identity is the rock of humanity.

Frank's Blank Slate

A review of 'The Wasp Factory' by Iain Banks

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 11th. October 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R3EW2QL2UQSEUV?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

The blurb gives the game away somewhat:

'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.'

At the centre of 'The Wasp Factory' are two brothers - `Frank' and `Eric', and their father, `Angus'. 16-year old `Frank' lives in a fictitious Scottish town, `Porteneil', with Angus, an academic. `Eric' has just escaped from a psychiatric hospital and is heading back home, regularly contacting `Frank' along the way in what turn out to be a series of bizarre telephone exchanges. It is never clear whether, in the author's mind, `Eric' is in fact `Frank's' schizoid alter ego, but that must be a strong possibility. The telephone conversations might be `Frank' talking to himself. `Frank' does appear to be psychotic as well as psychopathic. He displays the gamut of human emotions but they do not find expression in normal ways. He is generally cold around others, but seems to care about `Eric' and shows some warmth for his friend `Jamie'. He visits the pub regularly to socialise with `Jamie', but he seems distant from the women there. His only other contact with the outside world is the telephone, through which he speaks only to `Eric'. There is an ephemeral sense in which `Porteneil' itself is also distant, that is, from the rest of civilisation. As if to compound the picture of psychological isolation, `Frank' seems to spend most of his time on a desolate, near-island, which seems like an entire world unto itself, where he has created his own murderous kingdom abutting the wild sea. There, he inflicts pain, torture and murder on living things - including, occasionally, human beings.

`The Wasp Factory' is a good novel. The influence of William Golding is obvious, but Banks brings his own unique style. I enjoyed the writing immensely, the way it ebbs and flows and how Banks somehow manages to pitch each scene at just the right tempo. Some of it seems almost Buchanesque to me, but maybe that is just the subtle Scottish environment at work, which Banks paints vividly. Even so, there is the Buchan hallmark use of unusual words: this is the first time I have heard of birds "kaw-calling" or rain "glummuttering" against the window. Wonderful stuff. Looking for a deeper meaning in this novel is difficult because much of the author's `agenda' or `message' is rendered overtly, especially towards the novel's conclusion. I think Banks, regrettably now no longer with us, must have been a leftist, pro-peace and a feminist, as his writing has strong overtones in those directions. Despite his murderous activities, as I see it `Frank' is very much the hero of this novel. I think it is common ground that `Angus' is its villain. While I cannot be certain, I would say that `Eric' does not exist as a separate person in the author's mind and is in fact an alter ego of `Frank'. The author seems to have intended the novel to represent `Frank' as a `blank slate' proposition. The father, some kind of academic who seems to live like a hermit, is representative of authority, with his locked study door behind which he keeps all kinds of `official secrets' hidden from view. These concern the family and are matters that he does not want `Frank' to know about.

The relationship between `Frank' and `Angus' is rich with analogy and allegory concerning politics, science and religion. `Frank' is the innocent experiment, abused by `Angus', who appears to embody scientific authority. Our present scientific, medical and social science community are in the thrall of abusive and dangerous nonsense, much of it subtly influenced by egalitarian political ideology. I suspect the author's intention was to have the reader think of circumcision allegories and some such, but whether or not intended, the conflict between `Angus' and `Frank' highlights something deeper: the cruelties and dangers of ideological tendencies that assume `sameness' among human beings. Angus's evident Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ('OCD') - he keeps asking Frank about the volume or length of various household items - is a simple and obvious an allegory of power. How much of what we learn in our society is, essentially, useless or non-productive and in fact is designed to keep us all in line? However, the eponymous Wasp Factory is the central metaphor of the author's social, political and religious critique. The Factory is not on the island but in the loft of the house where `Angus' and `Frank' live, mirroring the `secret study' except that `Angus' evidently does not know of the Factory's existence and would no doubt be appalled if he did. `The Factory' is a mystical guide for `Frank'. Almost Taoist in its amoral conception, The Factory relies for its operation on natural signals rather than strict randomness or chance. In each cycle of the Factory, a wasp is retrieved from a "ceremonial jam-jar" and placed into the "deadly and perfect" contraption built from an old clock that "used to hang over the door of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Porteneil." On the face of the clock are traps and each wasp must decide through which trap to enter and meet its fate.

Like the murderous island rituals, the Factory is a useless excursion but also reflective of the banality and futility of social ritual in our own society, including religion. It is not surprising that `Frank' should be in thrall to such meaninglessness, however. He begins this novel as a character stripped of his vitality and power, deprived of his essentialist self-identity in a cruel fashion as a result of what we learn was some random and pre-cognitive incident without rational explanation. It is significant both for the characters in this story, and for us, that only once Frank knows the `official secrets' can he then understand the uselessness and futility of his pet `island ideology'. Thus the author cleverly takes the reader on a journey of enlightenment. We move from a primitivist state in which we are in thrall to a kind of clerical pseudo-scientific authority and in which our lives seem wrapped-up in Fate. We discover that the `official secrets' are both mundane - there are no interesting academic chemical experiments in the study, just old bills and other sundry items - but also shocking in that 'Frank' is to make a discovery in the study that seems to explain his entire life. `Frank' is not just of a loserific or `male lesbian' tendency, wishing to inflict pain, torture and suffering on others using the same dice of Fate that struck him; a kind of justice in which the Factory door 'shuts' on others as it did on `Frank'. He is something very different and more, and he ends the novel empowered.

Far from being a `villain' of some kind, `Frank' is in fact an innocent, just as we are; and a hero, just as, in the end, we might be. The rest of the world perhaps sees `Frank', in so far as he is known at all, as cruel and nihilistic, while overlooking the same qualities in itself, which are embodied by `Angus'. The modern world also requires submission and `femininity' among the masses: we are the `Franks', dwelling in a prolonged twilit, like sheep with a need to be led. We are `savage' and must be subdued and pacified for this reason, so that we can never experience Frank's sanguine enlightenment and recognise who we really are and become conscious of our own interests. In the novel, Frank's `resistance violence' - the murders - prove to be futile. The answer for 'Frank' was not really to be found in the study either. There was no 'secret knowledge' or esoteric path. In fact, the key to Frank's life was in his head all along, just as it is for us. Yet Frank's circuitous journey through this novel is not entirely in vain, just as our own learning and experience always points somewhere eventually, even if it might not seem that way at the time. In unconsciously and aimlessly pursuing his own negation, `Frank' is eventually re-born, and the mental daemon, `Eric', is obliterated.

Bank's first novel is not a crude exercise in mere literary nihilism, as some have suggested. One newspaper reviewer called this novel "repulsive", but what in fact is `repulsive' is neither Banks nor his imagination, but the world he fictionalises, which is nothing more than a mirror he holds up to our own - a fitting grotesquerie. Banks ably explores the uneasy juxtapose of the Gothic (Romantic) of much classic literary fiction versus the rationality of the modern world and in a sense he mocks both the critics and the cynics. We can call something `repulsive' and continue to dwell in ignorance in our own desolate little kingdoms, or we can labour to understand. We can wax lyrical about all kinds of avant garde and esotericism, or we can understand the truth: that the central character in this novel is just mad, and so are we.

Maxwell v Murdoch For Frequent Flyers

A review of 'The Fourth Estate' by Jeffrey Archer

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 16th. September 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1BEZBKYW30QNW?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

'The Fourth Estate' left me exasperated. Jeffrey Archer has to be one of the most frustrating authors in that he misses countless opportunities to elevate a very average work into something worthwhile. 'Kane and Abel' is the model for the Archeresque 'power saga', and his best-recognised work, but unlike 'Kane and Abel', in 'The Fourth Estate' there is actually potential for a genuine story that might transcend the commercial formula. Unfortunately, Archer (or his editors) chose to maintain stylistic discipline, and so instead of a fascinating and exciting account of the roller-coaster lives of two media tycoons, we have the Reader's Digest version in which the reader has to endure every sentimental trope, distilled into something uncannily resembling a novel.

The earliest use of the term 'Fourth Estate' in regard to 'the press' was by the 18th. century philosopher Thomas Carlyle, in his book 'On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History', in which he attributes the reference to a parliamentary speech by Edmund Burke, a quotation that also appears at the beginning of Archer's book. Carlyle's reference appears to be to the press, not necessarily its owners, whereas Archer's concern and sympathy here is firmly with the owners, i.e. the press barons. This is a book about two personalities, 'Keith Townsend', a scion of an Australian regional newspaper dynasty, and 'Richard Armstrong', born a Jewish Ruthenian peasant. The story covers a huge timespan as the men expand their respective media empires and try and outdo each other. Like the 'Kane' in 'Kane and Abel', the fortunate son - Townsend - provides the trajectory of the story, though - if anything - it is the self-made man, 'Armstrong', who becomes the pace-setter. As in 'Kane and Abel', the stories of the two men are interleaved in the text, though there are less coincidences than in 'Kane and Abel'. And just as in 'Kane and Abel', the self-made man is much the more interesting of the two. Though I didn't give into the temptation, I found myself wanting to skip the 'Townsend' sections so that I could find out what was going to happen next to 'Armstrong'.

'The Fourth Estate' is a blatant roman à clef relating to the lives of Robert Maxwell ('Armstrong') and Rupert Murdoch ('Townsend') and to mention that in a review gives little away that is not obvious from reading the first few pages. After reading the backcover blurb, I initially thought that this novel might indirectly be inspired in some way by the film 'Citizen Kane', given that the film is a power saga about newspaper and media ownership and an obvious cultural reference for fictional works on the press. But on reading Archer's book, I think I can safely say there is no creative relationship between the two works. In fact, I suspect Archer has never watched 'Citizen Kane'. Anyone who had would most probably not produce a work like this. The artistic movements that gave us the classic 1941 film were about the enlargement of the human spirit. In contrast, Archer's version of a Kane saga is a mean-spirited novel (if it might be called a novel at all) about two very unpleasant and unsympathetic characters. There is no character, depth, or pathos here. No generosity of spirit. No colour or sympathy. No life. This is Maxwell versus Murdoch for frequent flyers. The prose is archetypically Archeresque: compelling but flat and tiresomely sentimentalist.

The central problem is the airport novel/women's magazine formula adopted: in this case, a 'power saga' about 'worthy men' of capitalism. That latter turn-of-phrase - 'worthy men' - is not meant to imply that either of the two main characters is saintly, but in any religion (including the pagan religion of capitalism), a saint is not always or necessarily saintly. From a literary point-of-view, there's nothing wrong with this focus on power relationships, especially if the personal qualities of the main characters can be presented as ambiguous and in better hands this could have been fascinating material that conveyed the mystery of the human spirit. But through a formulaic lens, it's dull - albeit with a few interesting angles. Something very noticeable that runs through the entire novel is the way both men have a level of contempt of real journalists and newspapers. In fairness, the 'Murdoch' character does show some genuine feeling early on for the art of journalism and newspapers as an institution when he makes an earnest attempt to launch a national broadsheet, but that's a fleeting diversion and he soon reverts to type. For both men, the concern is money and the adrenaline buzz of deal-making, full stop. That does limit the potential of this novel a little. One finds it difficult to sympathise with or root for either man, but even within this stymied emotional framework, much more could have made by Archer of the two characters, given the extraordinary lives of their real-life equivalents. For instance, little is made of the links between the ersatz 'Maxwell' character and his dalliances in espionage or of the ethical conflicts facing the thrusting 'Murdoch' character. There are a hundred and one other possibilities. Not all of them can be made use of, but Archer's prose felt flighty and insubstantial and I came away with the feeling that he had been preoccupied with making this a lengthy book for the sake of it, in the mistaken belief that this somehow gives his work gravitas, when a shorter, more focused work might have resulted in a novel of greater depth and perception.

On the more positive side, there are some enjoyable highlights. My favourite character was 'Margaret Sherwood'. Her extended scene is hilarious and must have been inspired by something out of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. That flash of brilliance, though, is an exception. The two main characters are so unsympathetic that I found myself rooting for Mrs. Sherwood, an antagonist, and when that happens in a novel like this, something has definitely gone wrong. There is also plenty of Archer's pithy, deadpan humour and I enjoyed the way that Archer mimics newspaper headlines in the chapter headings, a trick that reminds me of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', a classic novel that had a few chapters concerning journalism.

Overall, I think there is a better writer in Archer, and I wish he would not rely on this type of derivative rubbish. That's not to say that all derivative writing is a bad thing. A lot of popular writing is worthwhile: Len Deighton, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Jack Higgins, and hundreds more authors could be cited in defence of what Dumas called the 'vulgarisateur' tendency. These authors deserve rave reviews because, in the final analysis, whatever their vulgarity, they remain objectively good writers. Archer doesn't fall into that special category. He is more of a poor man's Edgar Wallace and not so much a writer as someone who tells lurid power sagas in a particularly vivid way. It serves a market, though I think those of us who want to spend our time constructively are entitled to complain about the derivative nature of it, if only to encourage and cajole the author into better writing. But whatever my own frustrations with Archer as a writer, I must also acknowledge that he is a multi-millionaire author who has given pleasure to millions of people. Witness the reviews on this site. That is success that most of the literary snobs cannot boast, and you've got to admire it. This success will continue for Archer, and if people like his novels, then...well...why not?

Archer's magnum opus

A review of 'Kane and Abel' by Jeffrey Archer

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 14th. September 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R3STM9KLTL5UG?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Many people are familiar with the Bible story of Cain and Abel. In the Book of Genesis, they are the two sons of Adam and Eve, and thus siblings. Cain was the first human being to be born, while Abel was the first to die. It seems that Cain killed Abel out of jealousy and anger after God rejected Cain's offering while accepting Abel's. God then cursed Cain and thus we have the term 'the mark of Cain'. Jeffrey Archer's 'Kane and Abel' is a tale of human potential, but unlike the Bible story, the two warring principals are not siblings. Kane is the scion of a rich New England banking dynasty. Abel, on the other hand, is born illegitimate and raised by a peasant family in Poland. The comparable Bible story is an economic battle in an early agricultural society misinterpreted as a moral battle; Archer's story is, likewise, only a moral battle on the surface. The two characters talk frequently of things such as loyalty and honour, but this is just talk. In truth, this is a story about a power struggle in which both men demonstrate a willingness to pursue their own selfish ends using uncivil means. This is partly motivated by the sense of a penal curse that each man puts on the other - a 'mark of Cain', if you like - though this motivation is much more powerful for Abel who, for reasons I will not divulge here, harbours a primal hatred for Kane. But Abel is also undoubtedly jealous about the fact that Kane already possesses the 'acceptance' of their shared 'god', capitalism, and much like the Biblical Cain seeks to punish Abel. Archer's Abel sees Kane as a target in possession of everything he, as a poor immigrant, hasn't got and wants. Having accepted Kane's pagan money-god, Abel must work and strive and lie and cheat and generally debase himself in order to prove in the eyes of 'money' that he is the equal of Kane and thus worthy of the pagan god's acceptance. That is not to say Abel seeks approval. What matters to him is only attainment and thus acceptance as an apparent equal according to the universal scorecard of money. Thus in a reverse of the Biblical story, it is Abel who carries the 'mark of Cain': but in this story, it is an empowering amulet that brings him closer to the 'god', not more distant as in the Biblical story. It is Kane who provides the novel with its inevitable trajectory while Abel is the striver and chancer and thus the 'outsider' seeking 'acceptance'.

While Abel and Kane may not be related by blood, the author (in my view, cleverly) makes these two characters symbolic 'twins' throughout the story in that Fate repeatedly brings them together, sometimes in ways seemingly inconsequential, but always in a way that is significant to their converging fates. Some people have sneered at the author for putting these coincidences in, but I enjoyed that aspect of the story. In fact, I regard it as the best feature. 'Kane and Abel' is written by a stylist who knows his readership market exactly. Its enervated characters are like something out of an Edwardian-set TV drama, and include more than the fair share of anally-retentive bank executives - one of whom says: "There's no fool like an old fool but I'll back you young man" (that's pretty typical of the standard of dialogue here) - two punctilious Jewish attorneys and a seedy private detective who works on Saturdays. Although I actually quite like Jeffrey Archer, I have never been an admirer of his fiction writing. 'Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less' is awful rubbish. (The TV adaptation is even worse, if that's possible). 'Shall We Tell The President?' is just as bad. Both novels, and much of the rest of his work, suffer from colourless prose and lack the kind of emotional involvement and appealing dialogue that could really hook a reader. On the other hand, lots of people claim that they are hooked to his writing - witness the reviews on this site - so I suppose it's a matter of taste and opinion. We can also assume from Archer's sales levels that he is a multi-millionaire author, whereas I am not, so who am I to judge? I will judge anyway, as is my right, but while Archer may be a lousy writer, his success means he has to be taken seriously. At his best, Archer is capable of writing a compelling narrative, but it's analogous to fast food. Some people, knowing they shouldn't indulge, just can't resist doing so anyway. They do so even though they know it won't do them any good. As I read Archer's prose, I have this feeling of time slipping away from me, and maybe a few brain cells too.

Admittedly, in 'Kane and Abel' we are presented with a slight case of authorial schizophrenia. It's a 'slight' case because although 'Kane and Abel' does run contrary to the grain of Archer's writing career in that it is, genuinely, quite a decent novel and unquestionably Archer's critical best - his magnum opus, in fact - it does also follow a familiar authorial pattern. Parts of the first chapter are as good as anything I have read, but that only accounts for a tiny part of the whole work. True, 'Kane and Abel' has an intriguing and addictive quality about it in much the same way that a good bit of juicy gossip might have. There's a feeling of wanting to know what happens next, and I kept wanting to know what would happen next to Abel Rosnovski, by far the more interesting of the two characters. However, after a while the reader senses a repetitive pattern enveloping the experience. Rather like a tedious, self-conscious pop anthem, it all goes on for a bit too long and starts to become tiresome, if not intrusive on the reader's time and resources. At 550 pages, it's just too much given that the quality of the material is, for the most part, decidedly average. I'll happily read 550 pages of Dumas, Twain or Irving and come away a better, nicer person, but I can't read 550 pages of Archer without feeling a little resentful. For the most part, Archer's prose is flighty and rhetorical, but we're not in unfamiliar territory and what Archer has produced here is not unique.

'Kane and Abel' is a pluperfect example of what is known, generically, as the 'saga novel'. It's Reader's Digest stuff - fodder for middle-class housewives and people waiting in airports, etc. - and the struggle between Kane and Abel is the type of re-warmed, re-hashed sentimental twaddle you can read in any one of a hundred women's magazines. There's nothing wrong with that - it caters for a certain taste and each to their own - but I've always felt strongly that this sort of material should never really be described as a 'novel' in the proper sense. Dumas, an author I mentioned a moment ago, is particularly relevant here because Archer seems to like the comparison with the famous 19th. century French writer. Like Archer, Dumas had an unattractive and self-regarding aspect to his personality. He often called himself the 'vulgarisateur', which is French for 'populariser'. Yet Dumas is enduring and famous because his 'feuilleton' novels were not just 'popular' but also tender, evocative and stimulating. Archer's writing lacks these qualities. Whereas Dumas was brilliant, colourful and insightful, Archer is compelling, flat and sentimental. In most of 'Kane and Abel' and other 'novels' like it, there's precious little human warmth, no meaningful dialogue, and a distinct lack of introspection or atmosphere. These are attributes that hallmark the novel movement as I understand it, but they are missing from Archer's prose, and even when he tries to facsimile something to the reader that resembles novel quality, it feels painfully translucent or shop-worn. Where dialogue occurs, it is stilted and amounts to irony piled on irony. This is partly due to poor character development. The characters are formalised cut-outs lacking depth or sympathy.

In fairness, Archer is not alone in this kind of indulgence: he just exemplifies a long-standing trend in what might be called 'anti-novel saga-writing'. And it's a commercially-successful trend, so it's unsurprising that the plot of 'Kane and Abel' is reproduced in other Archer works, using superficially-adjusted character and plot devices. 'As The Crow Flies' and 'The Fourth Estate' stand out as obvious regurgitations of this proven formula in which the characters are karmic re-runs amidst a kind of contemporary capitalist version of the Old Norse sagas: those legendary epic 'tales of worthy men'. And just as the Old Norse tales charted the ordinary human cycles of love, power, romance and death, Archer's sagas chart the micro-human cycles of capitalism among the rich, powerful, determined, good-looking and fortunate. Whether the characters actually exhibit these qualities at any given moment in the saga is beside the point. The premise of the novel, much like the premise of the TV series Dallas (which first appeared about the same time Archer was probably writing 'Kane and Abel'), is the eternal personal struggle to acquire or embody the attributes of 'success', regardless of the true economic position or whether one is 'successful' at 'success-making'. Even Archer's mini-saga of poverty, i.e. the early life of Abel Rosnovski, is seen through a palpably retrospective lens, from the vantage point of the 'successful' or would-be successful. The material struggles of the poor are ignored or overlooked. Instead, in Archer's saga of modernist capitalism, the poor are blamed for being poor (they are 'unsuccessful') while the rich, or would-be rich (the 'successful') are celebrated in much the same way the saints were celebrated in some of the Old Norse tales. For Rosnovski, Archer's 'worthy man' - a veritable St. Olaf of capitalism - there is no material struggle, just a Randian vision of 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' people in which Rosnovski 'struggles' to fit in.

This idea of Jeffrey Archer as a 'saga-writer' rather than a novelist is reflected in some of his own utterances. He calls himself a 'story-teller'. I think that's apt. But I don't want to be too hard on the author. Somewhere inside each of us there is a better person fighting to get out. 'Kane and Abel' does have flashes of literary quality that suggest that somewhere inside Jeffrey Archer there might be a real novelist waiting to emerge. And I think that's where we'll leave this review - an appropriate simile for a story about human potential.

Just an endnote: My review here is of the original 1979 version of 'Kane and Abel'. It's important to note that Archer recently updated the novel, removing scenes, switching around chapters and so on. I have not read this latest version. My review is based on the original.

Science, Hubris, Drama...

A review of 'The Andromeda Strain' by Michael Crichton

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 7th. September 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1MYZTXPIA46SL?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

One of the things I like about Michael Crichton's novels is the presentation of quite difficult and challenging issues beneath what seems to be a simple storyline. In 'The Andromeda Strain', a group of elite scientists investigate the cause of a deadly bacteriological outbreak in a tiny town in north-eastern Arizona. The scientists confine themselves to a secret underground laboratory, an environment that provides an important backdrop to the story. There is a sense of fear and claustrophobia throughout, and the underlying theme is of how weak and futile human intelligence can be against the forces of Nature. We like to think of our technology as embodying perfection and exactitude, but no matter how intelligent and advanced human culture can be, we are nothing compared to the power of a tiny micro-organism, which if duplicated would wipe out our civilisation entirely. Our natural hubris lulls us into believing otherwise. Our technology is, after all, an extension of ourselves.

In tackling the fictitious Andromeda strain, the scientists and decision-makers adopt a thoroughly technological mind-set, even down to who will take the decision of whether to detonate the laboratory with an atomic weapon in the event of contamination. What is called 'The Odd Man Hypothesis' is based on the notion that an unmarried man is best-placed to make such a decision, as he is likely to be free of emotional entanglements. This type of narrow, logical approach seems to reduce a human being to a kind of cold machine and it's a style of reasoning that overlooks the complexity of the real world and the risk of 'false positives' and 'stupid' decisions. In practice, what the scientists find out is that there are just some things that we cannot understand.

The title of the book, and the codename given to the fictitious deadly strain, may be a reference to the Andromeda constellation or, alternatively, could be a reference to the Greek legend of Andromeda. The queen of Aethiopia, Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter, Andromeda, was more beautiful than the daughters of the sea-god, Nereus. This offended Poseidon, often seen with Nereus, and so he sent a sea monster, Cetus, to attack the kingdom. To sate the monster, the king of Aethiopia, Cepheus, had his daughter chained to the rocks on the coast. She was then rescued by her future husband, Perseus. In 'The Andromeda Strain', there is a slight allusion to this 'princess and dragon' motif in the use of the Odd Man Hypothesis and the role of 'Dr. Hall.' The attack by the mythic Cetus could be seen as an allusion to an unwanted marriage from which Andromeda is saved by the hero Perseus, and likewise 'Dr. Hall' is unmarried and becomes an unlikely hero of the story.

'The Andromeda Strain' is written in a documentary style, making extensive use of the 'false document' literary technique. Various technical data, graphs and illustrations are interspersed with the text and there is a list of reference works at the end. I found the story gripping and I am now becoming something of a fan of Michael Crichton's work. He reminds me very much of the late Victorian sci-fi novelists, especially Jules Verne and Arthur Conan-Doyle, and I am in little doubt that he has been greatly influenced by them. 'The Andromeda Strain' is just the right length - not too short, not too long - and is well-written while also covering a great deal of technical information which will interest readers who are scientifically-literate. The characters are well-developed, and in particular I liked the ambiguity of 'Dr. Jeremy Stone'. At the end, I was left wondering what exactly his knowledge of events was and whether he might have been working to a different, larger, agenda. It's a pity a sequel wasn't written. It's also sad that Crichton passed away prematurely. The ending, which I won't spoil here, is hair-raising and one of the most dramatic I have read.

The Future Belongs To The Past

A review of 'Timeline' by Michael Crichton

Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 1st. September 2013. 

Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/review/R3KWFD7PKBM9VS?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

As typifies Michael Crichton, 'Timeline' - a work of fiction - begins with an essay, 'Science at the End of the Century', about the real world that has informed the author's fiction. Crichton argues that just as it was wrong for the scientists of the late Victorian era to assume they had discovered all that was significant about the world, it is wrong for the scientists of our era to believe that our understanding of the physical world is complete, or even anywhere near accurate or true. Even the fundamental physical assumptions that govern our lives can be overturned without ceremony. New paradigms still await us.

Yet the most important point in 'Timeline' does not concern science or technology, but history, and it's found in the story itself. Appropriately, the prescient remarks are attributed to 'Robert Doniger', the physicist-character responsible for Michael Crichton's fictitious 'time travel' technology:-

[quote]"The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us why the things we value are the things we should value. And it tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.

"The future lies in the past - in whoever controls the past." [unquote][p480].

The past doesn't just leave a genetic legacy but a cultural legacy too. Our own individual lives can be seen as travelling along a road that stretches back into the distant past and on into the distant future to whatever is ahead. It is true that the future belongs to the past. How we interpret what has happened affects what we do now and how, and it also affects what will happen in the future.

However, as 'Timeline' demonstrates, history is really a summation of millions of human-scale incidents, with perhaps a tiny number selected for the scrutiny of posterity. This begs an important question: As we walk along the eternal 'road' of history that stretches deep into the past and yonder into the future, do our own small actions have any impact on human events? An answer is offered in this novel.

A group of graduate students trained in the culture of the medieval period, are sent back to 14th. century France in the middle of the Hundred Years' War to retrieve an academic colleague who is stranded there. After various plot turns, they find themselves holed-up in an English-held castle, which is under siege from the French. They have orders from the warlord who has taken them that they are to make Greek Fire (incendiary substances that are resistant to water), having let slip they know the method. The dilemma they briefly discuss among themselves is whether they may be acting unethically and altering the course of history by aiding the invading French against the English using these sophisticated incendiary techniques, of a kind hitherto undiscovered. The English are, after all, meant to lose the castle at the hands of the French and so putting advanced technology in their hands might rather spoil things. One character suggests, plausibly, that as this is just a local battle, then even if the English win, that quirk is hardly likely to affect the overall outcome of the Hundred Years' War. Another points out that whatever aid might be given the English, history says that the French win and that's that. His reasoning is that whatever aid is given, the result can never be an English victory, and so must always be a French victory, if necessary due to other factors, accidental or otherwise.

The idea of history as a canon of inevitability is elucidated quite well early in the novel, in a discussion of so-called 'time paradoxes' and why they cannot happen. Again from Doniger:-

[quote]"Say you go to a baseball game. The Yankees and the Mets - the Yankees are going to win, obviously. You want to change the outcome so that the Mets win. What can you do? You're just one person in a crowd. If you try to go to the dugout, you will be stopped. If you try to go onto the field, you will be hauled away. Most ordinary actions available to you will end in failure and will not alter the outcome of the game.

"Let's say you choose a more extreme action: you'll shoot the Yankee pitcher. But the minute you pull a gun, you are likely to be overpowered by nearby fans. Even if you get off a shoot, you'll almost certainly miss. And even if you succeed in hitting the pitcher, what is the result? Another pitcher will take his place. And the Yankees will win the game.

"Let's say you choose an even more extreme action. You will release a nerve gas and kill everyone in the stadium. Once again, you're unlikely to succeed, for all the reasons you're unlikely to get a shot off. But even if you do manage to kill everybody, you will have not changed the outcome of the game. You may argue that you have pushed history in another direction - and perhaps so - but you haven't enabled the Mets to win the game. In reality, there is nothing you can do to make the Mets win. You remain what you were: a spectator.

"And this same principle applies to the great majority of historical circumstances. A single person can do little to alter events in any meaningful way. Of course, great masses of people can 'change the course of history.' But one person? No."[unquote][p172].

This is very true. History is not an accident or a quirk of local idiosyncraces. It is governed by social forces. That does not exclude the potential for individual decisions and actions to have a significant impact, but the overall picture is of larger forces at work.

I think time travel is a popular theme in fiction because it heroically subverts these broad historical truths. Instead of being one of Doniger's helpless 'spectators', in a time travel novel (or film) we each enter our own fantasy 'Yankee v. Mets' game in which unreal historical rules apply and we really can determine the outcome. We become historically significant and can 'change history'. In this sense, 'Timeline' can be seen as a non-traditional 'time travel' novel in that the classic subversive theme is rejected by Crichton in favour of historical and scientific realism.

But time travel novels, stories and films are also popular because they naturally allow for all kinds of exotic plot twists. Often, the twists are of a literal nature, so that we end with the puzzling, and unresolvable 'grandfather paradox' - i.e. the character engages in some positive act that threatens his own existence. 'Timeline' is a little different in that it adopts a thoroughly 'realist' attitude to the time travel problem. The author cicumvents the traditional grandfather paradox by deciding that there is no paradox - and strictly-speaking, there is no 'time travel' here (the term is used for convenience only). Instead, the characters travel between multiverses, of which there are infinite number. The science behind this intriguing idea is explained clearly and well. This does take the edge a little off the castle dilemma described above, but that doesn't stop the characters behaving as if there is a paradox, or at least an ethical dilemma, when it comes to 'changing the past'. But given the technological basis, why should that matter? Why should the outcome of the entire Hundred Years' War not be altered in one universe if history (and thus the future from that point) is fixed anyway in the 'home universe'? But if history is inevitable, does this not also lend credence to the notion of Fate? Are we slaves to the past entirely?

What's perhaps a little frustrating about this novel is that Crichton does not exploit this new and interesting dilemma more. If we are to accept the technological solution, then what we are presented with is a kind of 'consequence-free' time travel, in which the past really is a theme park or laboratory (as the case may be) and history becomes a truly experimental science embracing actual Popperian falsification. Instead of that potential innovation, it has to be said for all the promise and potential hidden here, the story in 'Timeline' is a bit flat. Even so, it's a very good novel. When I first read Doniger's inexplicable fate at the close of the novel, I was disappointed as I felt it was unnecessary, but I put it down simply to the author's need to add some kind of cataclysmic ending that would do justice to the novel's promise. However, on reflection, I can see the author's perspective. 'Timeline' ends on the same note that it opened: as a medieval morality tale. There are no real 'goodies' or 'baddies' here. The putative 'villains' of the medieval 'Timeline' are simply acting in a manner appropriate for their period. That's part of what makes all this interesting. Theirs was a time before pacifying modernism took hold. The good-bad axis that we are familiar with in our everyday lives was not unfamiliar to medieval society - they had their laws and Chivalric Code and so on - but these constructions are really modern, retroactive, simplifications of what was in fact a complicated and nuanced social world that mixed raw violence with civility. Having set the scene, there is no room for contemporary moral piety. The characters who left for the medieval world are irrevocably changed by it.