Jack Maggs

By Peter Carey, 1997

Peter Carey has woven together the stories of four main characters and given them a psychological depth that makes them interesting and unpredictable. Taking inspiration from the life of Charles Dickens and from his style makes this novel more intriguing for readers like me who are interested in the writing process.

The Dickensian aspect comes first from the setting in Victorian London, a mix of middle-class privilege and underworld struggle. Like Dickens, Carey gives vivid detail that fits into recognizable streets of London. Carey has the sordid details of life for those without money and their various dodges to survive. Unlike Dickens, he does not romanticize. The life of young Oliver Twist and his companions are a charming picture compared to the reality of child exploitation and prostitution that Carey shows. Dickens’ readers would likely have rejected the harsh conditions and venal characters that Carey depicts – and we’d reject Dickens’ sentimentality and cartoonishness in a modern novel.

Like Dickens, Carey draws a whole series of interesting characters, although he gives them a psychology that is much more complex than Dickens does. And there are few characters here who are motivated by morality and generosity. Even relatively minor characters like Carpenter the footman, who initially seem cartoonish, turn out to have a complex history and psychology, although some, such as Henry Phipps, are not entirely convincing. The characters who are explored in more depth are fascinating and human in a way that Dickens seldom achieves. Jack’s pain and his obsession make him sympathetic even in his extremity and cruelty. Mercy’s need for security comes from a past that gave her choices we would not want to face.

Carey’s writing style is a leap from the nineteenth-century novel. It’s brisk and takes little time to set a scene or ramble through atmospheric landscape. Carey gives just enough detail to imagine the scene and moves to the action. Modern readers don’t like to take the time that would have been available to readers before entertainment options multiplied. The rapid changes of perspective with little pause for transitions would also have been less popular with earlier readers. But it keeps the modern reader going through the plot twists of the unfolding story, even while it leaves out the reflective pace that I often enjoy in nineteenth-century writers.

A special pleasure in this novel is the way that Carey parallels the actual life of Charles Dickens in the character of Toby Oates. His rise from poverty through his journalism to becoming a rising star as a writer and as an entertaining storyteller make Oates’ character an imaginative exploration of Dickens’ early life. It’s fascinating to see how Oates develops an early news report, and then chapters of his book. I can imagine how Dickens might have come across arresting characters in his travels and then created their background and motivations and built them out into a whole story. Carey gives this a modern critical perspective: Toby finds the details that make a journalistic story engaging, but later he is shocked when Jack rejects his portrayal of Jack’s life. The final pages offer a very contemporary reaction to the media.

I don’t imagine, though, that Dickens needed mesmerism to get into his characters’ heads. Carey’s use of mesmerism seems a colourful nineteenth-century detail, but a bit unnecessary. He gets into his other characters’ heads without it, and he lets the mesmerism theme die out without really going anywhere. But it is effective as a plot device to keep Jack tied to Toby long enough for the story to take off on its own. It also highlights the control that Toby’s education and social position give him over Jack, in spite of the threats to his position that Toby faces.

So here is a Dickensian novel about Dickens and his characters but in a modern style with an Australian twist – a totally mesmerizing read.

The Man Without Qualities

By Robert Musil (Author), Sophie Wilkins (Translator), 1930-43

This is a book of ideas, underpinned with the lives and social conditions of a corrupt and decaying empire – Austria-Hungary in 1915. It’s a wonderful satire, quite comical in many places, although it does tend to get bogged down in all the ideas that Musil wants to feature.

Ulrich is the man who has studied everything, criticizes everything and believes in nothing. He would be a cynical anti-hero if he were not so charming and entertaining. The other characters are foils of various kinds – Walter is a creative genius, but cannot commit to anything so he ends up taking a boring bureaucratic job that frustrates his wife, Clarisse. She is a woman of deep feeling, who despises narrow thinking, but still loves the Ulrich in spite of his lack of genuine feeling. Ulrich’s cousin Diotima is another woman of inspiring spiritual feeling, who looks to Ulrich to understand how to connect to the modern world. Arnheim is the Prussian man of practical knowledge who gets rich by getting things done while those around him talk. Diotima and Arnheim are naturally drawn to each other in spite of their opposite beliefs. Meanwhile, Moosbrugger is a violent, delusional criminal who lives in his own reality that makes perfect sense to him, although it lands him in an asylum and probably in an execution.

These, and many more, characters are drawn to the wonderful project of memorializing the reign of the king and emperor of Austria-Hungary in a “Parallel Campaign” and a Year of Austria (a land known to Ulrich as Kakania, the place of the Konig und Kaiser). Ulrich of course wants to have nothing to do with the Parallel Campaign. However, after an embarrassing police incident he uses a connection to the campaign to get out of jail and then has to follow up by acting as an assistant to the royal count who is tasked with leading it. The campaign expands and considers all manner of important ideas, finally adopting the theme of “Action!” although what action is never determined. Ulrich’s job is to help bring everything together, but he can’t stop himself from undermining every approach by raising countervailing ideas (even contradictory but nevertheless valid thoughts).

I love the picture of General Stumm von Bordwehr (a cavalry officer who doesn’t like horses and so is given the army’s social responsibilities), who joins the Parallel Campaign because the military cannot be left out. As a man of action, he says, he does not relate to the big ideas, and orders his assistant to summarize all the world’s great ideas so that he will understand what is going on. He complains that the world of ideas is full of conflict, while Ulrich points out that the military world is forced to be systematic and consistent, while the civilian world is a war of feelings and experiences.

In this curious and multi-layered setting, Musil raises many of the most profound questions of modern philosophical life – the nature of good and evil; of belief and questioning; of reality, intuition and faith; of creative life and limited vision; of working or of drifting toward a new vision of the future; of sex, desire, companionship and love. Musil does not resolve any of them – they are irresolvable but they are at the centre of modern life. As Musil describes it, “… it may be said that our world, regardless of all its intellectual riches, is in a mental condition akin to idiocy; indeed, there is no avoiding this conclusion if one tries to grasp the totality of what is going on in the world.”

I think that this is why the book ends as it does, with people at a party arguing whether the “War” faction or the “Love” faction has things right. How can the book come to a conclusion when Musil’s 1100 pages have shown that no single line of thought can be conclusive? In the end, Ulrich’s sister Agathe leaves the party early, feeling drawn to a man she had met earlier whom she felt was simply a good man, while Ulrich continues talking.

This is a book that should not be rushed – the pleasure comes from the complexity of every idea as it is developed, the foolishness of its proponents and seriousness with which they must be taken.

Stuck Rubber Baby

By Howard Cruze, 1995

This graphic novel has a compelling story line about a gay man living through the violence and racism of the American south in the 1960s or perhaps ’70s. Yet I found it rather unsatisfying. There’s a lot here that I would normally enjoy reading – and I did keep returning to finish it off – but I found that as I read, I kept criticizing it in the back of my mind.

So, to start with what’s good about it, it’s a vivid picture of what it was like to live through the turmoil of the American South in the 1960s and ’70s. The narrator, Toland, is a young white man, largely ignorant and uninvolved until a friend invites him to a mixed black party where he meets some political activists. He feels he doesn’t meet their expectations, but he is drawn to their fight against racist inequality. He’s not out as a gay man but his attraction to gay men in the political movement helps draw him in. He lives with his sister, who is also politically liberal. Her boyfriend is a redneck, which provides a complex foil.

Toland is gradually drawn more into the struggle, hears about or witnesses police repression, Klan bombings and lynching, and sees their impact on his friends. As Toland grows in political awareness and involvement, he comes out as gay but feels guilty that he is less committed than his friends. In a moment of crisis, he feels that his lack of honesty about his feelings has contributed to a friend’s death. Eventually, he moves away from the South, finds a gay lifestyle and later in life reflects on personal courage and survival.

I like the way the experience of racism and homophobia are linked in the narrative. Perhaps Toland’s gayness makes him more sensitive to social inequity, although this is not explicit. His personal experience certainly shapes his political views, although it’s not clear if he sees a link because he isn’t out for the early parts of the story. It’s impossible to draw a firm connection, but I think it is true that experience of oppression can lead to an awareness of other forms of oppression. Toland’s connections to his friends and his sister contribute to and shape his political consciousness.

The problem I have with the story is that it seems skimpy and melodramatic. It takes a long time for Toland to experience things while he comes to understand more of what he sees. The characters are oversimplified and schematic, just figures moving around a historical context. I never relate to them as people. In spite of the dramatic events in the storyline, I found Toland and his story a bit tedious.

This may be in part because of the graphic treatment. I think I’m not very receptive to graphic novels and I focus on the text. The context and background in this story are carried by the graphics, so the thinness of the text becomes more of a problem. There is less to fill out the page – less distraction – when the characters don’t have much to say.

I also find that I’m not open to Howard Cruse’s drawing style. Although Alison Bechdel compliments the art in her introduction, I find the drawings of faces and bodies simplified, comic-like, which doesn’t quite work for me. (Bechdel also has a simple drawing style, but it’s somehow more expressive.) In these graphics, everybody just looks dumb (which I thought also with Cruse’s Wendel comics in The Advocate decades ago). But it seems really clumsy. Without the pictures, I can’t imagine a story editor accepting this narrative for print.

To a large extent, these may just be personal reactions to a style that I don’t appreciate. I know that many other readers liked the book – in fact, this is a 25^th anniversary special reprint, so the publishers think there is an ongoing interest in it. But I think I will look elsewhere when I want to read about racism in America or coming out.

Station Eleven

By Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

I enjoyed reading this novel, although I’m not completely sure how the different parts hang together. It’s a complex story in which a piece of art and an art project link several individuals and communities following a catastrophe that separates them and everyone around them.

The piece of art is a graphic novel called Station Eleven, written by one character and shared with some of the others. It doesn’t seem to have a narrative and rather than inspiring, it seems to be captivating imagery about a very repressive society. Nevertheless, everyone who sees it seems to be inspired by its beauty. Or perhaps they just don’t want to lose the few objects of beauty that remain.

The art project is a travelling group of players who perform music and Shakespearean plays in the isolated surviving communities after the disaster, taking the motto from a Star Wars episode, “Because survival is insufficient.” Clearly the survivors of the catastrophe agree, because they flock to see the shows even at a time when strangers are a potential risk.

Outside of these remnants, the survivors struggle to live in a world where modern ways of life cease to exist. The health catastrophe has led to a social breakdown in which people fight each other for any remaining resources. St. John Mandel doesn’t dwell on this period, saying that people don’t want to remember it. It’s not what St. John Mandel wants to write about, and not I would choose to read about, either.

While small communities live together, they are on the alert for roving bands that might want to rob them of what they have. Without people to manage a fuel infrastructure, essentials such as heat, water and electricity fall back to whatever communities can make on their own. All this seems realistic, reflecting what a collapsed modern society would look like. While dangers from other people and the loss of modern technology would certainly be threatening, many people would join together to support each other and rebuild a cooperative society. They couldn’t survive in any other way.

And they would be looking for something beyond survival – art to give them a sense of something beyond daily life. I think we do look for this, even those of us who are materialists and don’t believe in a spiritual world. We have to accept that the non-rational has a place in human life. However, the role that St. John Mandel gives the graphic novel in linking the characters seems a bit mystical. It may be best to think of it as a literary device that casts a light on different lives – people respond to it in different ways. Even the nastiest character, who does not know its history or significance, keeps his copy and seems to value it. It turns out that people are linked in surprising ways, even if the links are not meaningful. The meaning comes only from what we give it, not from intrinsic value. Perhaps this is what the novel shows: even in the worst times, we look for art that goes beyond daily life and we give it our own meaning. Sometimes that is a connection with other people and sometimes not, but that does not diminish its power as art.

The novel has many different story lines that don’t really seem connected: the successful actor and his unsuccessful relationships, the friend who is successful at an unrewarding job, the actor in the travelling players, and the medic who cannot save everyone but provides the services that he can. They all find meaning in their lives, linked to each other even they don’t know it. They seek connection and the hopeful ending comes from the possibility of rebuilding it. Interestingly, while the human links are essential to each of the characters, the links are also what causes the catastrophe. Without easy travel and close living conditions, the disease that destroys human life would likely have been limited to a small area and died out before infecting the world. Like the storyline in the graphic novel, the novel is very ambiguous and supports multiple interpretations. It’s not a simple narrative, but that makes it richer and more rewarding. I didn’t expect the novel to take me in this direction, and that may be its greatest strength.

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

By Jan Morris, 2001

Jan Morris finds Trieste a genial place where, like many others, she fits in and feels comfortable. I read this book thinking that it might be a relaxing place to visit for a few days after spending a busy week or two in Vienna. But Morris’ description makes me wonder if it might be too quiet. How many days do I want to spend drinking a quiet coffee by the harbour and walking out for a visit to contemplate one of the many small museums?

In truth, Morris says she has been drawn to Trieste many times over the years because of its quiet charm, welcoming people and slow pace. She does point out that in the 2000s, after she finished drafting the book, it has become more modern and linked into contemporary culture. In the twenty-first century, it has developed a vigorous growth in tourism, science, education, business. But Morris isn’t interested in that, and makes Trieste seem a sleepy town best suited for recuperation. I was in fact thinking of a quiet place to relax after my city vacation, but do I want something a little more stimulating?  

Morris describes the architectural highlights in a sympathetic way, suggesting that they complement the town with understated glory. The long history as a coastal town is best represented in the harbour and the remaining bourgeois palaces of the late Austrian empire. Trieste was the holiday resort for the middle class of Austria. It became an important sea port for central Europe until the Austrian empire fell apart and trading patterns shifted. It links the coast to the harsh environment of the surrounding karst mountains. And it has been a place where the Slavic peoples of the Balkans worked and lived together with the Italians and Austrians. James Joyce and other European figures spent significant parts of their lives here (often complaining of the weather and culture). But all this seems to be about a past time that has moved on.

Morris suggests that Trieste makes the most of a long-gone history, becoming an ideal spot for philosophical reflection. “The fundamental fact about modern Trieste, underlying all that happens here, is that it was built ad hoc – to be the principal port of the continental empire. Ever since that purpose was lost, the city has been trying to find substitute functions for itself… and has been more or less stagnant.” So says Morris. And yet she felt drawn to return several times to appreciate the pleasures of a slower life relaxing and wandering with no necessary destination. She can withdraw and contemplate what it means to be nowhere in particular.

I wonder if it is Morris’ attraction to the quietude that makes Trieste sound so sleepy. I have after all spent time visiting historic towns that a less sympathetic travel writer might call out-of-date backwaters. Lucca, Porto and other cities could be described in terms of their past histories and slow streets, although they are very vibrant with lots of street culture. And Trieste is well positioned for a daytrip to Venice or down the Illyrian coast.

I have friends who have recently visited Trieste, and found it surprisingly pleasant. It’s barely on the tourist list, which is a point in its favour. It may be just a matter of getting into the right frame of mind, as Morris suggests, enjoying the coffee and a convivial read rather than looking for romanticized features that in the end seem a bit disappointing.

Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare

By Will Tosh, 2024

I enjoy going to the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare festival every summer, and watching a play or two at the Globe Theatre when I’m in London. This book shows how the queer cultures in the England of the late 1500s shaped William Shakespeare’s life and are reflected in his writing.

Tosh says in the introduction to the book that, while it may be fruitless to speculate about Shakespeare’s sexuality, it is very rewarding to look at the queer settings in which he was working. He imagines several scenes to illustrate his themes: the idealized same-sex love in the Greek and Roman classics that school boys learned; the imagery and language (and abuse) around the boy actors on the London stages; the close male relationships among young men learning the law (or not) in the Inns of Court; and the explicit homoeroticism in the written poetry of Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries. However, as Tosh points out, while there clearly was a strong undercurrent of homoeroticism in Shakespeare’s milieu, there was also repression of homosexuality should it become too visible. This helps explain why Shakespeare limited its expression within acceptable limits of stage and print.

Tosh’s descriptions offer several perspectives new to me. It’s not surprising to read that sexual activity (and sexual abuse) was common among the boy choirs and the commercial stage companies, although I’ve not seen it discussed by Shakespeare historians. The references to homosexual activity among the Greeks and Romans are pretty widely known, although I didn’t realize how central it was to the education of young Elizabethan men. As Tosh says, it may have been idealized and downplayed by the instructors, but students know what is really going on. And Tosh shows how Shakespeare reflects this knowledge in his plays and poems. The fact that we’ve gone so long without acknowledging it really reflects mainly on the Victorian commentators who chose to bury it, and on the homophobia that shapes current perceptions.

A few years ago, I saw a production of “The Merchant of Venice” that showed the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio as a queer relationship. It had always seemed inexplicably overwrought as a close but straight friendship, but it makes much more sense as a queer relationship. Tosh’s explanation of idealized male friendship and partnership gives it meaning that helps understand Shakespeare’s other plays as well.

In addition to the sociological setting in which Shakespeare wrote, Tosh analyzes the influence of other writers. Marlowe’s queer history, “Edward II,” showed Shakespeare the possibility of bringing out universal human stories in the plays instead of stock characters. He also shows how the explicit homoeroticism of Shakespeare’s contemporary, Richard Barnfield, opened the possibilities of voicing queer male desire in the sonnets. While Barnfield was first valorized, then rejected, for his explicit queer poetry, Shakespeare’s often more ambiguous language escaped criticism. Tosh suggests that, after seeing how his society turned on Barnsfield, Shakespeare may have deliberately delayed publication of his sonnets, which for years circulated among friends in hand-copied sheets only. After the flamboyantly queer lifestyle of James I of England, a social crackdown on public expression of homosexuality led to censorship. Shakespeare retired to an affluent and comfortable home life in Stratford, perhaps unwilling to risk what he had won.

Tosh says his book “… has been an invitation to think honestly about Shakespeare’s evolution as a queer artist, to examine the factors that helped and hindered his growth, and to consider the ways his culture both endorsed and suppressed queer desire.” I think it succeeds in laying out a queer way to understand Shakespeare’s works in their historical context as well as in our times.