An Old Review: Marryat--The Privateersman

There was a time when I wrote reviews of books on Amazon--just as an exercise and for the fun of it. Amazon tells me I wrote 12 reviews and that 42 customers found the reviews helpful. I got an e-mail today saying that my review of a book had been helpful. I had completely forgotten the book--it was one I had recorded for the Library of Congress: The Privateersman by Marryat. You would think that reading a book aloud would somehow make it stick in your memory--but no: I recall nothing about it.
Here is the review:

"The previous reviewer has set out the plot--such as it is--of this book, and I do not wish to repeat it. I would describe the book as a real,old potboiler. I have just finished recording it, and I must say that a great deal of the narrative is tedious in the extreme: the dialogue is very stilted by modern standards of verisimilitude: and the succession of coincidences that enable our priggish hero to escape from slavery,forced marriage,burning at the stake,being hanged as a pirate,or hung drawn and quartered as a traitor--all these simply defy belief. And since the narration is in the first person, one knows all along that the narrator will escape--it is just a question of which far-fetched coincidence will save him this time. Nor do I think the sea-battles are up to snuff in comparison with other Marryat books. No doubt the book appealed to audiences at the time it was written--but we no longer have much sympathy with a hero who is unflinchingly brave when facing the prospect of horrible torture, devotedly faithful to his dearest love when offered a comely Indian princess, and much comforted by his endless study of the Bible, especially when this hero is always spouting off sentiments in sentences that could have been crafted by Samuel Johnson or Gibbon.

If you are a true Marryat fan, and like this particular genre--then buy The Privateersman. But as the previous reviewer suggested, many of the other Marryat books are much better."

At present I am reading in parallel two novels. "The Decline and Fall of the Great Powers" by Tom Rachman, whose first novel was ecstatically reviewed, and "Expo 50" by Jonathan Coe--whom Nick Hornby describes as "...the best English novelist of his generation." So far, the Rachman has not really grabbed me, and the Coe is amusing in a very old school Brit novelist way--pleasant, insightful social comedy set against the background of the World's Fair in Belgium in 1958, which I actually went to after finishing at Oxford in the summer of that year.

I am also recording a real potboiler, "An Irish Doctor in Peace and War"--the ninth in the series of books about an Irish country doctor, of which I think I have recorded four. The author seems to have turned the series into an industry, and I suspect he gets a lot of help, judging by the acknowledgements. Personally, I have had a bellyful of Doctor Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly and the lovely oirish folk of Ballybucklebo. They can all go and jump into Belfast Lough. Maybe the last novel in the series (say, number 18) might be "An Irish Country Doctor and the Mass Suicide at Ballybucklebo."

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

Blanche is French, in her early twenties, living in San Francisco  and working as a dancer, singer, and call girl. She lives with Arthur, a dandy who uses the money she earns from her sex work and performing to do nothing except gamble with an odd young man, Ernest, who completes the ménage a trois and sometimes makes a three-some when Arthur and Blanche engage in sexual activity.  Blanche has had a baby, which Arthur has handed over to what proves to be a horrific baby ‘farm’ where his growth has been stunted—but Blanche believes he is alright, out in the open air on a proper farm. Or does she?  Blanche has ambivalent thoughts about almost everything , including her sexual activities.

The date is the summer of 1876, and there is a smallpox epidemic raging. The action of the plot is initiated by a chance meeting between Blanche and Jenny—who wears men’s clothes, rides a penny-farthing bike, and makes her living by collecting frogs for the French restaurants. Jenny comes back with Blanche to her rooming house, which she actually owns, having saved her sex-worker money to buy it, and meets Arthur and Ernest.  Jenny makes disparaging remarks to Arthur and Ernest, and she leads Blanche to question why she supports the two of them.  The ménage breaks up for a number of reasons, for which Jenny is the catalyst: Blanche and Jenny go out to the edges of San Francisco and stay a few days at a small flea-bag hotel: and, on the third night there, Jenny is shot and killed by someone who fires through the window. Blanche is sure that Arthur or Ernest did it, meaning to kill her and not Jenny, but providentially Blanche bent down at the moment the shots were fired.  And from there on, the plot is essentially Blanche trying to find Arthur and Ernest, pin the murder on them, and in the process retrieving her baby from the baby farm and then losing it again.

The novel proceeds very cleverly by juxtaposing the present and the past. The murder of Jenny comes early on, and then—alternately--we go to the past and the present; the past being the meeting with Jenny, the break with Arthur and Ernest, and the events leading up to the murder; and the present, covering what happens after the murder, when Blanche loses her baby, recovers it, and faces a distressingly uphill struggle to solve the murder and get back on her feet again. The reader needs to keep alert to the dates.

This does not do justice to what an extraordinary book this is. As I read it, I kept thinking—heavens, what an enormous amount of research she much have done to recreate San Francisco in 1876. I found the detail just staggering. The streets, Chinatown, the bars, the music halls-- the whole milieu was extremely well described and obviously drawn from contemporary accounts. I thought that Emma Donoghue must have read a year’s worth of newspapers to get it all right.

And when you get to the end—she describes all the research, and--BIG SURPRISE, at least for me--you learn that the whole plot revolves around real historical characters and a notorious murder of a cross-dressing female who caught frogs for a living and rode a penny-farthing. There is also a glossary of all the French expressions used in the text, which are plentiful, and short articles about the various songs that crop up from time to time.

If you are somewhat averse to sexual content, be warned there is some fairly explicit sex—but it is certainly very minor in a book this length. And perhaps my only criticism is to wonder a bit about Blanche’s sexuality because she does seem to enjoy her prostitute role and also seems to get turned on rather too easily.

On this aspect, the following is from the Washington Post review by Ron Charles:

“…these feminist issues have always been prominent in Donoghue’s fiction (and in her nonfiction — she’s an illuminating literary critic with a PhD in English from Cambridge University). Fans will recall that the superhuman mom in “Room” was willing to do anything to save her child, but Blanche is a more nuanced character. This isn’t a whore with a heart of gold so much as a woman with a heart of many alloys. She often hates being a mother and feels buffeted by crosscurrents of resentment toward her baby and love for him. “She can’t go out,” Donoghue writes, “can’t have a bath, can’t do anything but sit here staring at the saddest, ugliest baby in the world.” How many parents have fumed with that secret frustration? “Much too late to wish this small life undone. And yet she does wish it, every time her eyes approach him.”

Donoghue  portrays Blanche’s sexuality as similarly conflicted. She knows “the rhythmic friction between desire and disgust,” and she’s willing to admit to herself that she sometimes feels aroused by being “used, abased, crushed into something else.” But can she still detect the difference between pleasure and exploitation, between what she wants and what others want from her? Here are many shades of grey from a writer who knows how to use all of them.”

Strongly recommended.

"!3 Ways of Looking at the Novel," by Jane Smiley

       Jane Smiley's book is a 569 page tome. This is mainly because, starting with an Introductory Chapter 13 on page 270, she describes her self-imposed task of not only reading, but detailing the plot lines and critically reviewing, 100 novels, beginning with Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of the Genji," and ending with Ian McEwan's "Atonement." This section is 299 pages. On average, her pieces on each novel run about 8 to 10 pages. This marathon effort apparently took well over three years. 

         The Introduction and the first nine chapters cover such topics as "What is a Novel?" and "What is a Novelist?"  and then run through the origins, morality, psychology, the art, the circle of the novel, and the novel and history. Although Smiley's take on all these topics is always interesting, it does cover fairly well trodden ground. For me, the more interesting chapters are: 10 "A Novel of Your Own (I)," 11 "A Novel of Your Own (II)," and,12 a 'case history' of how she wrote the novel "Good Faith." Great stuff for any aspiring writer.

         The copy I have is second-hand (Abe books, 99 cents plus a few dollars postage) and it was clearly money well spent. The prior owner has marked an appreciable number of the novels listed with a tick, indicating--I suppose--that he/she had read them. Against some, it is noted "but where is it?" I think we have all had that problem from time to time.

         Not a book to get from a library and plough through; but one to keep somewhere handy, and, when you have a few minutes to spare, to read one of her pieces on a novel you know you have read but perhaps forgotten what it was all about...

"The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill

 This is a strange book. It was long-listed for the Man Booker prize. Joseph O’Neill, the author, also wrote “Netherland,” which  was accorded much critical praise, and which I greatly enjoyed.

      One review: “Shades of Kafka and Conrad permeate O’Neill’s thoughtful modern fable of exile, a sad story that comments darkly on the human condition…”

      The narrator is a New York lawyer who, after a tormented break-up with his partner Jenn (as she was christened: not short for Jennifer), goes to work for a family of Lebanese multi-multi millionaires named Batros. In fact, he does very little actual work, and when not at work he does very little at his luxury apartment. He sits in his massage chair, watches pornography on his computer, pleasures himself, and any odd thought or fact that crops up leads him to Google the subject to find out more—like the home towns of the Russian prostitutes that he visits under an assumed name or the exact location and history of The Comoros.

      A myriad of facts or experiences excite his curiosity and lead to pages of analysis and philosophizing, not only about the injustices and iniquities of the sheikdom but about broader questions of human morality--in society at large, and in his own psyche and in those of his fellow ex-pats. A stock saying like, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” can lead him to consult (on his computer) several dictionaries to explore the meaning of ‘scorned’ and to analyze the hell out of what the

apothegm means in particular situations.

      The narrator, who is never named, and is known in his law firm as X (the initial of his first name), speaks in a deliberately pedantic and exasperated voice—a voice that does exasperate the reader from time to time.  And the novel can be seen as a prolonged exercise in the complexity of the narrative voice, which seems to have little connection with a real person. Indeed, at the end of the novel, the reader has, I think, no more of a clue who this person IS than he had on the first page, although he certainly knows how X thinks, broods, reasons, cogitates, analyzes, weighs moral issues, dreams, and deconstructs the world.

      But the narrative voice certainly holds one’s attention, and there is considerable humour –LOL stuff, as X would say. And one can only admire the skill and consistency with which Joseph O’Neill maintains this voice throughout the novel.

      Bottom line—well worth reading.

(Lexicological note: obsessively checking, like our narrator X, whether ‘apothegm,’ as used above, meant what I thought it meant--a pithy maxim or a pithily expressed observation—I discovered that the OED gives the definition under “apophthegm,” although it does recognize the alternative spelling. But up pops my spellchecker and suggests: apophthegmatic, apophthegmatize, and apophthegmatist.)