T for Terrorist or H for Hero?

I'd been meaning to read V for Vendetta for a long time, mostly because a friend lent it to me and I hate being that guy - you know, that guy you lend books to who either takes ages to give them back or who never returns them at all. I sat on the damned thing for at least a year, and I would say that makes me officially guilty of one count of book neglect. However, I've already returned it so hopefully that somewhat mitigates my lameness.

As for the reading experience...it was pretty good. But I have to admit to something shocking: I preferred the film to the original graphic novel. And the movie's not even entirely good; Natalie Portman is so completely disappeared just by Hugo Weaving's voice that the film is a bit of a disaster when she's on screen. But Hugo Weaving! He's never out of his crazy Guy Fawkes mask and yet he's so nuanced and compelling...which is what I think V in the book is supposed to be.

Here's the problem: visually, V is, of course, compelling. Unfortunately, he says (especially near the denouement) some really cringe-worthily earnest things about What Things Mean. On screen, when spoken by Mr. Genius Man Hugo Weaving, they make sense; in the book, they read like the spiritual musings of some drunk 18-year olds I remember hanging out with when I was, er, drunk and 18. Just pretentious and annoying., in other words

And another thing. Having also read The Watchmen, which has Alan Moore in common with V for Vendetta, I am going to making a damning comparison: Moore is as unable to write female characters who aren't annoyingly 15-years- old-seeming as Guy Gavriel Kay is. They're all the same, and they're all whiny and immature teenagers, even when they're supposed to be in their 20s or 30s or 40s or older. They exist on only two registers: shrill and...okay, maybe just shrill.

Poor female characterization aside, and capital E earnestness in V aside, V for Vendetta nonetheless says some very interesting - and frighteningly timely - things about how easily humans will allow their own, and especially others', freedoms to go out the window in exchange for "safety". The violent jingoism and localized racism, homophobia, and general intolerance to criticism which defines the dystopic England against which V rebels is horrifying; just as disturbing is how so many individuals who don't share the ruling party's hatreds still not only don't resist, but also actively participate in their vicious work because they either see no other option or fear the repercussions if they aren't seen to agree.

Whatever V's "deviance" is - be it race, sexuality, or political affiliation - it is never revealed. The point, I guess, is that that shouldn't matter - that fighting for freedom is something that transcends all of these things. Yet, it also speaks to the fact that if we knew this about V, he wouldn't be capable of standing for freedom symbolically - because someone (reader and/or other character) would identify against him and dismiss what he stands for.

He does wear the mask of a white man - Guy Fawkes - but a white man who's not only been dead 400 years, but who also died directly for his cause. V is a symbol using another, already established symbol to serve his purpose - and that purpose is to both transcend current definitions of the human so he may critique them, but also to establish historical precedent and validation for blowing up the symbols of those who oppress those who are different. Which leads me to what is, obviously, the most interesting thing about V: He is a terrorist, precisely in the way we would define it now, and yet everything he does is made to make sense in the context. Not easy sense, mind - except when Hugo Weaving is doing the talking and the blowing up, when it does.

I'm surprised there was no great outcry about this, and yet maybe what it comes down to is a simple and horrifying failure to identify: By reading the comic or watching the film, we know precisely what V is resisting and can easily imagine that we would want to do something - potentially, anything - to change things, too. But when others, in situations we can't comprehend because we have no real insight into them, do the same things, we condemn them as monsters.

So, while I didn't entirely either enjoy or admire V for Vendetta, I really appreciated Moore's insights into the less admirable aspects of human psychology - for that's what he's best at, I think.

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it

Summer has arrived in the big city and with it, this past weekend, performances of the entire 23-play Chester cycle. The Chester Mystery plays are a set of interlinked short dramas chronicling the entire span of Christian history as it has and must occur, from Creation to the Harrowing of Hell and the Last Judgment. Such plays were traditionally put on annually in any number of towns in England, with each piece being performed by a different guild; each guild had their own costumes and carts depicting the key scenes of their play. The players were not, of course, professional actors (which came later and helped push the mystery plays firmly out of fashion), but rather guild members.

That the Chester cycle was being shown, in its entirety, this weekend in downtown Toronto was a huge deal and one which I almost didn't know about, until two history profs from NYC came into the shop and mentioned it approximately one hour before the start of the first show! Luckily, I was able to spend part of Saturday and Monday watching plays (in this case, each play was performed by a different company of players, often university-affiliated, from around North America). This may have been a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I'm really happy I was able to drop a great deal (not everything) and spend some time in the audience.

Of the 23 plays, I managed to see only 6 but all were worthwhile, even if quality of performance and production did vary fairly widely. I was lucky to be there for the commencement of the whole event, the play The Fall of Lucifer. The God in this play created the world (what he's doing here) and was disobeyed by Lucifer and Lightbourne, who he casts into Hell.

I really liked the way this actor played God as both benevolent and pleased with his work, but also immoveably unforgiving of his angels' disobedience to his edict to not try to usurp his power. God, at least in this cycle, has a taste for forbidding things and then hiding 'round corners to see if angels or people will feel tempted or not; he's a bit of a jerk that way.

Lucifer, of course, hearing from God how awesome he is, believes it - and goes for the throne when God does said hiding. The other angels know their place - and engage in a fairly substantial discussion about remaining there, which would have had immediate social, never mind spiritual, resonance as class was so deeply and visibly ingrained in everyday social relations in medieval England.

God and Lucifer were both really good in The Fall of Lucifer and I regret not managing to get a better photo of Lucifer. Besides being quite talented, she was really beautiful and her costume the same - as Lucifer should be (to God's stage right here, in the mask with the giant black feathers).

What I think I liked best about Lucifer is how the actress played his fall in a way which would be quite familiar to those familiar with Renaissance tragedy - specifically, with Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. It's not Faustus I'm thinking of though when I say this; rather, Mephistophilis, the devil Faustus summons to do his bidding, speaks of a tragedy more profound than Faustus can conceive of, and makes the latter's pride and desire look absurd:

  Faust. Tell me what is that Lucifer thy lord?
  Meph.  Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.   
  Faust.  Was not that Lucifer an angel once?   
  Meph.  Yes, Faustus, and most dearly lov’d of God.   
  Faust.  How comes it then that he is Prince of devils?   
  Meph.  O, by aspiring pride and insolence;
For which God threw him from the face of Heaven.   
  Faust.  And what are you that you live with Lucifer?   
  Meph.  Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,   
Conspir’d against our God with Lucifer,   
And are for ever damn’d with Lucifer.
  Faust.  Where are you damn’d?   
  Meph.  In hell.   
  Faust.  How comes it then that thou art out of hell?   
  Meph.  Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.   
Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,   
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,   
In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?   
O Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,   
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul. (iii.60-80)

And, indeed, Marlowe was influenced by Medieval dramatic history when writing his most famous play. Lucifer, in the Chester cycle, has no competition for title of tragic figure. Jesus's death is criminal and heart-breaking but not tragic, in the literary sense, for he doesn't bring it on himself.

One of the things I love about mystery play cycles is that the tragic and awe-inspiring exist quite comfortably in close proximity to the comic and even slap-stick. In the second play in the cycle, The Fall of Man, the comic dominated as, even though expulsion from the garden is awful, Adam and Eve are simply too child-like (in both good and bad senses) to be capable of either tragic action or reflection.

They follow the dictates of their bellies and cower in gutless and abject fear when confronted with their wrong-doing; Adam and Eve's naivety are thus easily played almost slap-stick, even if the consequences are horrifying.

The cart each play is staged on can make a notable difference in what will make performance sense. For The Fall of Man, the key is, I think, in highlighting the innocence and beauty that precede the fall and this cart did this perfectly. Also, there's no way to make nakedness look un-silly unless it's real nakedness (which it wouldn't be, either now or in the Middle Ages), and so playing up the ridiculous is easiest and makes sense really - for after all, how foolish to lose everything for an apple! (Photos: above is God as imagined by this group of players; to the left is Eve entering the garden after being created from Adam's rib).

Nonetheless, by the play's conclusion, the irreversible nature of Adam and Eve's transgression becomes terrifyingly clear as the same actors (some seen in white here) who baaaah-ed like sheep when God was making the world plentiful, become angels of doom and vengeance wielding swords of fire.

And that's the thing about masks - they allow individuals to become secondary to the roles (both literal and dramatic) they play, which is part of the Mystery plays' larger conflation of the history of real, individual people with the history of God's world.

This dramatic conflation of the individual and the historical is nothing less than a playing out of medieval England's dominant mythology of its identity within the continuum of religious history. The personal nature of history (and future, as the cycle nears completion) is crucial to the effectiveness and power of mystery cycles for it shows us precisely what we're up against, both in terms of past transgression and future trials. On Monday morning, I began the day in the 0800's with The Harrowing of Hell, in which Christ opens the gate of hell to pick out those who deserve salvation, etc.

The hell mouth seen here, which is very nicely reminiscent of the hell mouths known to have been used in medieval drama and into early Renaissance drama, is meant to focus audience attention precisely on where they will be when the harrowing begins. Besides seeing people on stage with whom they would have interacted normally in their everyday lives, the fourth wall of the stage is constantly being crossed as demons creep up from out of the audience (one hissed quite loudly in my ear, to make me think on the state of my soul) - in other words, the gate to hell, through that gaping and toothy mouth, is not very far away at all and maybe more importantly, not metaphorical.

This emphasis on the personal and immediate aspect of the history of the world is best emphasized, however, by the structure of the cycle as a whole. The carts used are moveable and as one performance finishes and its cart is rolled away, the next is moving inexorably forward to take its place; further, while watching one play you can hear the voices, screams, music (often ominous drums, as the cycle winds down) of the cart that follows which, while its play is being performed simultaneously not 100 feet away, will come forward and be performed again in front of you.

Way back in the day, I wrote an undergraduate paper on three of the final plays in the York cycle (all the mystery play cycles tell the same basic story of creation to judgment but show really interesting local differences). As I recall (like I said, waaay back), I focused on the staging of The Last Judgment, put on by the butchers and staged near their shops so that as audience members watched the final word on God's judgment of them and the world, random animal body parts would be floating by on a river of blood! Really, there's no wonder I ended up focusing on drama in grad school, is there?

Being able to sit outside (on Saturday, in the rain; on Monday, in the glorious sunshine) is something that really should inspire me not only to get outside and read more there but also to take in more outdoor drama, of which there is no shortage here. Now that I know I can read Shakespeare, I'm sure watching some Shakespeare in High Park wouldn't kill me - unless the acting is atrocious, of course; but then, that would give me lots to write about...

It is not the job of the novelist to tell us how to read, or why

Ladies and gentlemen: Gustave Flaubert. I read Madame Bovary about 10 years ago and didn't enjoy it much; not because I thought Emma Bovary was a "slut" or something, as I've heard so many early 20-something members of the earnestocracy call her since. No, I just didn't think it was a very engaging book. Flaubert (and/or his translator) failed in the case of Emma Bovary and her very real plight to make me give even one tiny bit of a damn, either emotional or mental, about her, never mind any other character in the novel.

I'm sorry to say that, older and hopefully more mature as I am, I've found myself to be equally uninterested in every character of Flaubert's A Sentimental Education. Published in 1869 after Flaubert spent 5 years working on it, this novel is apparently one of the most influential of the 19th century, and was adored by George Sand, Emile Zola, and Henry James. I haven't read Sand yet, but I really disliked the one Zola novel I've read so far; as for Henry James, everything and anything is forgiven in someone who could write like that. If I weren't doing my French Literature Project, I would have taken Zola's approbation of Flaubert's book as a warning not to read it.

A Sentimental Education tells the story of one Frédéric Moreau, a young man from the provinces come to Paris to study and make his name and fortune. He's got some talent, but he's not brilliant; he's charming but prone to make social blunders which others nonetheless forgive him for. He's not stupid but he is remarkably flighty and shallow and generally unlikeable - and yet, his fortune ultimately comes to lie in the way of making advantage "alliances" with women with power and money. Mind, he always holds a flame for one Madame Arnoux, who does eventually fall for him, but won't ultimately go there.

First of all, all these women who either love or want Moreau - why? I never once got a sense of what could possibly be attracting any of them to him. And this is not a simple case of taste - Flaubert completely fails to indicate where the attraction might lie. One thing I really loved about Dangerous Liaisons was that while most of Choderlos de Laclos's characters were essentially despicable, his writing was sophisticated enough to make them incredibly compelling as well. There's nothing I hate more than a boring villain or cad, and I'm sorry to say that I Flaubert writes nothing else in A Sentimental Education.

Besides penning a tale peopled by the incredibly dull, Flaubert also fails to make the historical context in which he set his tale - the 1848 revolution and creation of the French Second Republic - seem anything but a dry exercise in listing historical details. I haven't read many historical novels - or, more likely, I haven't engaged with them enough as such - but having recently read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, I have a sense of what a really good author can do with history, and Flaubert doesn't do it. History itself can come to seem so real as to have a pulse and a heartbeat, or it can seem so real as to cause claustrophobia - but not, I'm sorry to say, in A Sentimental Education.

In the end, this novel read to me like an intellectual exercise rather than as art; in my view, art should savour somewhat of the mystical if only in the execution (Henry James!). That Flaubert had an intellectual agenda in mind when writing this novel seems pretty clear both from the book itself and from translator Douglass Parmée's introduction to this edition. Parmée begins his intro with a series of aphorisms of Flaubert's describing both what he wanted this novel to do and how people ought to read it. I think it's Flaubert's instructions on how to read A Sentimental Education that caused me the most irritation, however: "Don't read A Sentimental Education like children, for diversion, nor for instruction, like ambitious persons; no, read it in order to live."

Eh? Every single character in this novel is either an idiot, a dullard, fatally spineless, or as selfish as a spoiled child - how are we supposed to use such things in our daily living? And how are we supposed to use it to live without taking it as instruction anyway? It is not the job of the novelist to tell his or her readers how to read, or why - and it's a doomed effort anyway. The thing about committed readers is that we will have our own experiences of each book we read, and I'm surprised when authors so completely fail to remember that. It makes me want to punch Flaubert (and maybe Harold Bloom) in the neck a little.

Now, I know it's too late to say this and be believable, but I will nonetheless try: in spite of the above, I didn't hate this novel. I didn't like it much, no, but there were substantial chunks of time in which I found myself reading a pretty good novel rather than a badly executed pamphlet, and those were enjoyable, engaging, and thought-provoking times. In spite of such  moments, however, I doubt I'll make time for Flaubert in the future - such moments were too much the exception.

To redeem my experience of 19th-century literature, I've already launched myself into the second of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels, Phineas Finn - and so far, so good. But now, I'm off for Sunday brunch in the sunshine with friends.

It is a new world

It is a new world!
In the film Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow opens the door to her maid and tells her, upon hearing that "It is a new day", that it is, in fact, "A new world!" Having just made the beast with two backs with Joseph Fiennes, I don't doubt she had good reason to say so. I have not created said animal with Joe Fiennes, more's the pity, but I can still say, with a great deal of glee, that for me it is still "A new world!" Why, you ask? I have just read a play by Shakespeare, my first Renaissance play in 18+ months, and it was extremely enjoyable because totally void of the remembered pains of grad school. You know what this means? It's not too soon anymore. Bliss. Oh Shakespeare, I've missed you so much!

The play I chose was The Winter's Tale, which is one of my favourites, and it's one of my favourites because it remains in many ways baffling even after repeated re-readings. (I believe I've read it approximately 10 times now.) The two primary areas of bafflement are: 1) Leontes' deadly jealousy of his wife, Hermione, and his best friend, Polixenes; and, 2) the structure - this play begins as a tragedy, turns into a pastoral comedy with the unique stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear", threatens to turn back into a tragedy, and then concludes as a romantic comedy with the marks of grief from the preceding fading but still very present.

Linguistic power, royal power
When I've taught or spoken about this play in the past, I've focused on Leontes' inexplicable and sudden sexual jealousy at the friendship between his wife and friend in terms of linguistic prowess. Specifically, I've noted that while Hermione and Polixenes are fluent and well-versed in the complex social dance that forms the politeness and playfulness of courtly interaction, Leontes is almost functionally illiterate in this regard. He can't distinguish the flirtatiousness that defines courtly banter from an imagined reality involving treasonous adultery and malicious, even murderous, hood-winking.

This leads to Polixenes fleeing for his life, Hermione being tried for treason, their young son dying from the stress of it all, and their new-born daughter Perdita being banished to a far shore to die from exposure or hungry, ravening beasts. I won't tell you the whole plot, for as one of Shakespeare's less read plays, you might actually be able to be surprised by what you find there; I will say that by the play's conclusion, Leontes' hold on courtly language has become fit for a king and order is restored.

Re-reading the play, however, I began to think there was more to Leontes' jealousy than a hyper-paranoid sense of exclusion and therefore social vulnerability. I noted more closely this time how his jealousy of his wife in the first 3 acts is thematically and structurally mirrored in Polixenes' jealousy of his son's attempt to chose his own wife in the final 2 acts. In Polixenes' case, his anger doesn't arise out of an ability to comprehend social rituals surrounding language; rather, it arises out of a profound desire to control his domain, and as he is king and father, his son Florizel is quite clearly in his domain.

This particular lack of control over this particular subject drives the normally pleasant Polixenes to distribute widely and without restraint threats of banishment, torture, and cruel death. It's not that he doesn't understand his son's reasons for choosing the woman he does - he admires her beauty and even admits she appears to be by nature far superior to her nurture - but that he isn't interested in what his son is saying. In this way, he is like Leontes, for royal control is closely tied to the exercise of linguistic control.

The king's prerogative
But there's something deeper going on, and I believe it is this: simply, jealousy (or any other emotional or mental whim that strikes a king) is, without qualification or explanation required, the king's prerogative. Leontes may - and does - pay a very large price for his misplaced suspicions of his wife's fidelity, but that price does not include his crown. Leontes' royal position is never threatened, regardless of how tyrannical he becomes; his line is threatened, certainly, but his position in life is not. Thus, it doesn't matter whether or not we can comprehend where his jealousy comes from, it only matters, really, that Hermione and Polixenes miss the warning signs and don't adapt or respond.

And there are warning signs in Leontes' words, from the very beginning (check out all of Act 1, Scene ii). Thus, not only is the linguistic breakdown here a two-way street and not simply the failure of the king to speak and listen as he should; it's also a failure by Hermione and Polixenes to remember that in Sicilia, it is the Sicilian king's privilege to make things mean what he wants them to mean - just as Polixenes may do, and does, at home in Bohemia.

In a courtly world, where conversation is a sort of elaborate game, there is (to quote David Mitchell) a game beyond the game - and that is, to constantly be deciphering the king's unspoken, badly spoken, barely formed, etc desires and thoughts. To fail to remain attuned to both games at once is dangerous indeed. Now, I'm not saying that Hermione is, because she doesn't notice her husband's vicious paranoia early on, partially to blame for the death of her children; I'm not interested in apportioning blame at all, and I don't think that's what Shakespeare was aiming for here either. Rather, this play, for all its structural confusion - nay, because of and reflected in its structural twists and turns - is a meditation on the difficulty in managing social  relations in the highly stratified but ever-changing world of early 17th-century England. More importantly, I think, it's a meditation on the linguistic conflict between the personal and public, the interior and the social. When kings cannot comprehend their own and their wives' meanings, what hope can others possibly have to do the same?

Blogger's prerogatives
There's so much more I could say here, but this is getting too long already. I love this play, and have more questions than answers still. And for me, having more questions than answers always lead, back in the day, to my best academic work. Whether or not I write more about The Winter's Tale in the coming days will be determined entirely by my mood. If you haven't read this play, though, I highly encourage you to do so. It's good fun and will give you lots to stew over.

The other blogger's prerogative I'm exercising here is that I'm not going to check to see which scholars have said all this already. I'm sure it's all been said, but I'm just going to take pleasure in my impressions without worrying about inserting myself into a formal academic conversation; and maybe this, ultimately, is the best part about it not being "too soon" anymore. :)

The past is a palimpsest

The Eye in the Door is the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, which tells the story of the effects - mental, emotional, physical - on young men in the midst of the first world war. Like the first novel, the second is well-written and the characters - this time, primarily, Billy Prior and Dr. Rivers, although Siegfried Sassoon shows up near the end - are just as compelling, if not more so as Barker reveals more about them. But I think Barker has tried to do just too much with this short volume and the result is a novel lacking unity, as unfortunately, I think a lot of middle novels in trilogies often do.

I think the unifying idea Barker was going for was how history is a multi-layered, unknowable, ever-changing and highly personal phenomenon; as she writes early on,

The past is a palimpsest, Prior thought. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge. (p. 55)

Fair, especially in what is essentially an historical novel addressing the most personal aspects and consequences of the war. The problem is, Barker tries to integrate too many of these aspects, attempting to layer and connect: various forms of mental illness including disassociative identity disorder, homosexuality, scientific experiments on patients, the history of psychiatry, class struggle, national security versus personal rights, and war resisters. And she attempts to do all this while situating Billy Prior, the protagonist and one of the only fully fictional characters in the novels, firmly within the general historical context of the war.

It's not that I think this was a bad book; generally I enjoyed it but, to borrow a neologism from Rohan over at Novel Readings, its aboutness was scattered over too many topics. I think to do justice to all these issues, and to make meaningful connections between them, The Eye in the Door would have had to have been at least 2-3 times longer than it was. I'll be interested to see how the third novel, The Ghost Road, plays out and if it can tie together the myriad threads begun in the first two. But not now. Now, I'm deep into Flaubert's A Sentimental Education which, at this point, is sadly reading like the deformed love child of a poor man's Dangerous Liaisons and a homeless man's Old Goriot.