The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis

 

First published in 1986, Winner of Mann Booker Prize 1986

It took some time, but the characters in The Old Devils--elderly friends in South Wales who spend most of their time discussing the condition of being Welsh--grew on me as I worked my way through the chapters. Amis is a master of dry wit. I'm sure I would have a deeper appreciation of the humor in The Old Devils if I knew more about Wales or the Welsh. Fortunately, Amis found a number of other targets for his wit that transcend nationality: lecherous old men, the women who encourage them, gossips, hypocrites, drinkers, academics and poets among them. He also teases wonderfully comic moments from malfunctioning bowels, adulterous desires, social posturing, road trips, and inebriation.

Most of the central characters in the ensemble cast have full and distinct personalities and unique sets of behaviors. Some of the personalities are quirky, some introspective. Most are repressed but some manage to experience and display emotions. Some are funny and some are a little sad and most are sometimes a little annoying--but who isn't? That seems to be one of the points Amis explicitly attempted to make. It took me awhile to start caring about these people but by the middle of the novel I was hooked on them. They became kind of like the relative you care about but don't want to visit very often. I give Amis props for making them so convincing.

This isn't a plot-driven novel. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace, following slow-moving people with aging minds and bodies. Other than a couple of big events, both near the end of the book, nothing much happens. I wouldn't call it plodding but I wouldn't say the writing is lively either. If you are in a mood to be patient, the characters and the fun Amis has with them make the novel worth reading.

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The Inheritors by William Golding

First published in 1955

The Inheritors tells the story of a small group of Neanderthals, primarily focusing on Lok and Fa, as they encounter strange "new people" who walk upright, have little body hair, shoot pointed twigs through the air, and ride across the water on hollow logs. The Neanderthal tribe includes a young girl and a baby ("the new one") who end up with the new people. Lok and Fa must face their fears of the new people as they try to bring the girl and baby home.

The word that kept coming to mind as I read and thought about this book was "clever." Writing about life from the Neanderthal perspective poses a challenge, and Golding used some clever devices to describe the limitations of primitive beings. Golding's Neanderthals communicate by gesture and empathy as much as by language. Their names are simple compared to the polysyllabic names of the humans. The Neanderthals live very much in the here and now; they aren't good at planning; when they talk about doing something new they say they have a "picture" of it, as if they are having a vision. They search for food only when they feel hunger; if they're sated they don't bother to store food for the future. They prefer not to eat meat but they will if one animal has been killed by another; they don't want the "blame" of causing an animal's death. They have a touching burial ritual but they don't appear to contemplate the possibility of an afterlife.

A startling event occurs toward the end of the novel that makes the whole thing rather depressing, particularly for those who (perhaps unrealistically) expect humans to behave more civilly than Neanderthals. Golding may be saying that the simple decency of primitive life was supplanted by early humans who (like those who followed them) lacked respect for other forms of life, killed ruthlessly, and used their wits to advance at the expense of others. If Golding is saying that these are human traits, the product of an evolutionary imperative, I don't know that the point is particularly profound (although it might have seemed so in 1955 when the book was first published). Still, the story illustrates that lesson in an entertaining way. The last chapter shifts to the point of view of the humans: again, a clever way to distinguish between the dying past and the evolving present, and a device that adds insight by demonstrating that the human's view of the Neanderthal may not have been much different than the Neanderthal's view of the human.

According to the cover blurb, some critics think The Inheritors is Golding's best work (and Golding apparently thought so himself).   I prefer Lord of the Flies, but The Inheritors is certainly worth reading.

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Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

First published in 1983

Oppression is a recurring theme in Coetzee novels, and it is the theme that drives Life and Times of Michael K. While the novel is set in South Africa, it is not explicitly (perhaps not even impliedly) a novel about racial oppression. Rather, Michael is treated as an outsider, as subservient, because he is disfigured and mentally dull. Having been raised in an institution where he was taught to peel potatoes before being given a job as a municipal gardener, Michael wants nothing more than to be left alone, nose to the ground, to work the fertile land of his ancestry. He is a simple man with simple needs and the simplest of those--freedom--is bedeviled by travel permits and curfews and work camps, by a civil war he does not understand, by societal demands that do not concern him. Throughout the novel, Coetzee illustrates the oppression of war, of institutions and bureaucracies, of demanding parents, of uncaring employers and landowners. Even the doctor who envisions himself as Michael's savior wants to bend Michael to his own will.

Using prose that is plain yet elegant, Coetzee creates empathy for Michael's plight--we feel for him when his crops are trampled, when he is removed from the land he loves, when he is forced to do physical labor for the benefit of those who have political pull with the authorities, when he is badgered to talk about his past, when he is not permitted to indulge the simple pleasures of sleeping and eating as he chooses. Michael thinks of himself as an earthworm, but he lacks an earthworm's freedom to be true to itself. The last few pages of the novel are almost an ode to simplicity, to the freedom of living off the land, unencumbered by the dictates of those who would imprison nonconformists.

Life and Times of Michael K is an important contribution to world literature. It is also a moving, beautifully written novel.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute

First published in 1947

John Turner has a health condition that will end his life. How will he spend his last days? Working? Spending time with his wife despite his troubled marriage? It's easy to empathize with Turner as he ponders his options while plugging along. Ultimately, in the limited time that remains before his death, Turner decides to locate and assist three servicemen who befriended him while he was laid up in a hospital during the war.  He feels the need to do something positive with his last months of life and relishes the opportunity to repay the kindnesses they showed him.

Turner's account of the servicemen's stories is enriching and frequently moving. Although Turner's quest leads him to the three men, the story focuses on two of them:  Phillip Morgan, who married a Burmese woman and adapted to her culture; and Dave Lesurier, a black American soldier who was persecuted and unjustly accused of rape by white members of the American military.  Morgan's story gives Shute a chance to compare British and Burmese cultures, philosophies, and political organizations.  While Morgan's story is fascinating, Lesurier's is more powerful.  Some American readers might think Shute went too far in portraying members of the American military as racist (although, to his credit, he introduces an American character who is not) while portraying the white residents of a British village as accepting, and indeed embracing, the wronged soldier.  I thought the story had the ring of truth but I'm not an expert in the racial attitudes that prevailed in small English villages during World War II.

In each of these situations, Shute addresses dynamic issues of culture and bigotry with sensitivity and insight. Unsurprisingly, Turner learns as much about himself as he does about his old friends, ultimately making his journey one of self-discovery. To some extent, the novel is about clearing the path for death.  He returns to his wife a better man than the one who left on his journey..

In prose that is characteristically quiet and graceful, Shute tells an end-of-life story that is sad but uplifting.  The Chequer Board is a very impressive work.

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The Interrogation by J.M.G. Le Clezio

First published in French in 1963.  This review is of the English edition published by Simon & Schuster on July 14, 2009.

"The Earth is blue like an orange": the words of a clever poet or of a madman disconnected from reality? J.M.G. Le Clezio explores the legendarily thin line separating the mentally astute from the mentally ill in The Interrogation.

Adam Pollo isn't sure whether he has recently been discharged from a mental institution or from the army. He lives in an abandoned house at the top of a hill, spends his days in a deck-chair by an open window, waiting "without moving, proud of being almost dehumanized," in a state he describes as meditative, watching the shadows of insects and "reconstructing a world of childish terrors." Adam is isolated, but claims he doesn't want to be alone: he wants to "exist with the coefficient 2, or 3, or 4, instead of that infernal coefficient 1." He thinks about and sometimes tries to write to Michele, the woman he met on the beach. Sometimes he follows a dog through the streets. Toward the end of the novel Adam makes a rambling speech to a gathering crowd and later finds himself in an asylum where he's interrogated by students under the disdainful supervision of a psychiatrist.

Although the psychiatrist is quick to attach diagnostic labels to Adam's mental illnesses, the reader is less certain, in part because Adam is so adept at verbal jousting with the students. Adam is disturbed and troubled, but those are traits shared by many who avoid institutionalization. It's clear that Adam doesn't function well in society, equally clear that he doesn't much want to -- his isolation is self-imposed, as evidenced by a letter from his mother -- but in his self-absorbed world, Adam's mind flourishes. Adam finds meaning in random forms of light and shadow, the product of a different way of seeing. This resembles mental illness more than genius, but the novel seems to be asking: who is to say? It is Adam, after all, who calls attention to the poetic phrase "the Earth is blue like an orange," asking why its author isn't regarded as a lunatic. Adam defines life as "a kind of disorder of the consciousness," and despite our ceaseless attempts to impose order on our straying and occasionally irrational thoughts, Adam might be right.

I confess that I found some of the novel's middle passages tiresome, particularly when Le Clezio began playing with the novel's form, changing fonts and lining out text and leaving big blank spaces between brackets. The devices approximate the disorder of Adam's mind, I get it, but after awhile reading disordered thoughts gets to be a lot of work. Other parts of the novel, including the interrogation and Adam's interaction with the students, struck me as brilliant.

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