Monday 20 February 2012

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary (1857)
Novel – my copy (read on my kindle) during December 2011 to January 2012
#31 of 2011-12 – #152 of All-Time
- 4 nods out of 5 -


For the British reader, there is always something quite intimidating about the French novelist. For centuries these two nations have fought wars and battles, rivalled one another for significance of their time zones and spheres of influence, as well as sniffing their noses at various culinary delights. But language seems to play that more crucial and higher role in the British-Franco relationship.

Mr Flaubert remains one of the world’s, and in particular France’s, most celebrated novelists. In a year – 2012 – when the English speaking world is trumpeting the achievements of Charles Dickens, Flaubert is a writer who produced work in the very same time period. But rather than the cheeky, squalid low-lives of Dickensian London, Flaubert went for the tragic of our mundane lives. Madame Bovary is the noted classic of Flaubert’s back catalogue; a book that has been read the world over, and adapted – with various successes – to the silver screen.

The book charts the life of Charles Bovary, a provincial doctor whose wife dies whilst young. He remarries, to a farmer’s daughter called Emma. The new Madame Bovary grows listless and tired of her married life, forever daydreaming of a more cherished, spoilt future dancing with aristocrats, receiving complements, and supping on the finest that the world had to offer. She would read of ‘love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains.’ As with other noteworthy realist - and naturalist - novels of the nineteenth century (including Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth), Emma never fulfils such fantasy; instead succumbing to a horrible, prolonged death of her own making. Not even this suicide lived up to the romantic expectations that she had read so feverishly in books and stories:

‘Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more.’

In hoping to escape her life, Madame Bovary takes various lovers; including the duplicitous Rodolphe, and the withdrawn Leon. Each relationship never fulfils its initial promise, with Emma envying the males that surround her. ‘She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she could call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free…’ Even in this, she did not succeed; giving birth to a daughter.

In Madame Bovary, Flaubert has created a heavyweight of characters from the pages of novels; a mystery that is hard to unwrap and solve. This is shown nowhere more clearly than in the main character’s very own name. Just who is Madame Bovary? Is the first wife who dies early in the novel; or Charles’ very own mum; or perhaps Emma, who does all she can to escape the very same surname. As Rodolphe exclaims to her:

“Ah! You see,” replied he in a melancholy voice, “that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! Why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!”

Madame Bovary is a woman at odds with the world, her own identity and destiny; as well as her very own name. But despite such tension, the text is not one full of warmth in which the Worm longed to return to the following evening. Despite Flaubert’s – seemingly self-congratulatory – talent for description and prose, the book has its shortcomings. In the very same dreary humdrum way of Madame Bovary’s very own life, the end of the book is one, like the central character’s herself, are glad of escape at its final close.

Is this simple British fear, snobbery, envy, dislike of a renowned and celebrated French novelist? Please, dear reader, delete as appropriate and send your answers on a postcard for the Worm to retort aloud.


Buy it here in paper form:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Madame-Wordsworth-Classics-Gustave-Flaubert/dp/1853260789/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329774687&sr=8-1

Or download it on your Kindle, free of charge!:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Madame-Bovary-ebook/dp/B000JQU7LW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329774687&sr=8-2

Sunday 5 February 2012

The Failure of Political Extremism in Inter-War Britain - Andrew Thorpe (ed)

Andrew Thorpe (ed.) - The Failure of Political Extremism in Inter-War Britain (1989)
History – 90 pages – my copy (paperback; 2003) borrowed from Plymouth University library during January 2012
- 3 nods out of 5 -




Political extremism has made a come-back, of sorts, in the past decade. We have the efforts of Islamic fundamentalism, as well as the growth of the English Defence League, to talk about in chin-stroking discussion, in heated debate, and to read about in our paper of choice. The focal point of this book is the extremism of Britain’s inter-war period (1919-1939): two decades of chaos and havoc. The same two decades saw the emergence of Hitler in Germany, of Stalin in Russia, of Mussolini in Italy, and of Franco in Spain. Yet in Britain – in our own moderate way - we continued voting and supporting the same parties and the same politicians; of whom none were extremists waging ideological war. Even Ramsay MacDonald, Labour’s first Prime Minister, snuggled up in bed with the Tories in his later parliamentary career. Just why this was: Messrs Thorpe, Harmer, Coleman and Thurlow set out to answer.

The editor of this collection, Thorpe, writes a summarising introduction, as well as the first section: ‘The Only Effective Bulwark Against Reaction and Revolution: Labour and the Frustration of the Extreme Left’. The other sections are equally enlightening, full of probing debate, including Harry Harmer’s ‘The Failure of the Communists: The National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, 1921-1939: A Disappointing Success’; Bruce Coleman’s ‘The Conservative Party and the Frustration of the Extreme Right’, and Richard Thurlow’s ‘The Failure of British Fascism’. Each article – initially presented at a one-day conference held at the University of Exeter during 1988 – brims with brilliant analysis. The reader is given a well versed drilling in the communists of Britain in the 1920s, the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists during the 1930s, as well as the principal figures of the centre parties during the period.

As we all know, such extremes failed in overthrowing or gaining hold on the British state; but what were the reasons for such failure? Thorpe writes on ‘security from invasion, economic and demographic factors, the maintenance of Britain’s self-esteem, and a workable constitutional system’ as helping the country to avoid turning to political extremes for the answers to our ills. Of great interest are the arguments used by Thorpe and Coleman in their analysis of Labour’s relations with the communists and the Conservatives relations with the fascists: the stability of these mainstream parties prevented the growth of the extremes, with one of the key points being the middle class values of the leaders of the centre parties. The likes of Ramsay MacDonald and Clement Attlee were a world away from the horrors of Communist Russia, despite sharing ideological common ground. The middle classes, then, were important in stopping extremism gaining a stranglehold on British politics; yes, the same middle classes who are castigated by the upper crust and the working poor (As many children born between siblings would tell you, it’s not easy being in the middle!).

Without one extreme rising, the other extreme failed due to not being required by the public. For example, on the continent (particularly Italy and Germany), the rise of the communists led to voters moving towards a seen “saviour” - such as a Mussolini or a Hitler – in order to rid them of the far left menace. The two extremes appear to need the other in order to survive, in order to complete them and vouch their entire existence. Without the rise of one, they are both doomed to the history pages as a minor occurrence, no more than a blip on the political landscape.

A small book, but a book busting with information and insight. For fans of political history in this country, the Worm urges you to buy these articles to reflect and look at political extremism from a fresh perspective.

Buy it here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Failure_of_political_extremism_in_in.html?id=9-pPmUVFswIC&redir_esc=y

Thursday 2 February 2012

King Lear - Ian Pollock

Ian Pollock – King Lear (1984)
Illustration – 140 pages – my copy (paperback; 1984) borrowed from Plymouth University library during January 2011
- 3 nods out of 5 -




Shakespeare in the play-house; Shakespeare on the small screen; Shakespeare on the silver screen; Shakespeare on paper; Shakespeare in schools; Shakespeare on the internet…and as in the case of this book, Shakespeare in illustrated, comic form!

The Worm found a collection of such books whilst glancing on the shelves in a library. Immediately, the venture sounded like a good deal: any which way you want your Shakespeare, it appears to be catered for. I scanned the books on offer: The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and King Lear. The last one was enthusiastically selected.

For regular readers of this blog, you will have noticed that in the past few months the Worm has upped his reading on Shakespeare (in the form of the trilogy on Henry VI) as well as graphic novels (including the sublime Alan Moore comic Watchmen). This enterprise, then, sounded like a great fusion. In order to set the scene, illustration is provided by the renowned artist Ian Pollock, whilst the text is from the hand of William Shakespeare himself. The essence of the play is unchanged, in that the characters and plot remains. Of course, in the translation to comic form, such text is cut up to fit into the box panels of the page.

One might think it would be interesting to see a representation on the likes of Lear, of Edmund and of Edgar; however, the pace of the book is uneven throughout. The blame, if such a strong word could be used, must be laid at the hands of Pollock himself. Whereas previous reads (namely Watchmen and Batman: Year One) fill the page and seamlessly move onwards, Pollock’s book is more snap shot images, with the action pacified. Furthermore, Pollock’s choice of framing of characters is confusing to say the least. The majority of panels appear unconnected to the next, with the reader scratching the top of their heads in wonder at just what is going on.

The immediate answer here lies in the likes of Batman & Co drawn by comic artists who are used to the action sequence. This is not to diminish Pollock as a creator of image – the gouging of the eyes of Gloucester is a truly wonderfully frightening panel – but rather that he was the wrong choice of artist for such collaboration.

Unfortunately for the actual story itself, such confusion overshadows the plot and Shakespeare’s prose. The madness of King Lear is mostly obscured by the hectic, unconventional framing (and the Worm does not entertain the suggestion that such an effect was Pollock’s overall intention). ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes spout! Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!’, Lear rages to his companion, the Fool. More disappointingly is the reluctance to engage with the theme of generational conflict and the throwing away of the old to make way for the new. Whilst Edgar’s concluding statement is diminished by the childlike sketching of the character on a barren landscape; undoubtedly, such a statement is better served on the stage or on the screen. (NB: Edgar’s final words: ‘The weight of this sad time we must obey / speak what we feel, not what we ought to say / the oldest hath borne most: we that are young / shall never see so much, nor live so long.’

As a whole, the Worm has concluded that such annoyance means Shakespeare is not for comic form, and must remain on the stage or screen. 5 nods for effort and inventiveness; but a sobering 2 nods for the final product.



Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Lear-William-Shakespeare/dp/0283990775/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327677922&sr=8-3

Read a more flattering review of the book here:
http://picturesfromanoldbook.blogspot.com/2011/03/king-lear-ian-pollock-part2.html