Uncanny Stories - May Sinclair

To those of us in this particular corner of the blogosphere, where reprint publishers of early twentieth-century women's novels are our bread and butter, the name May Sinclair is probably most closely connected with her 1922 novel Life and Death of Harriett Frean (and perhaps for coining the term 'stream of consciousness', in print).  And a very good novel it is too (my thoughts here.)  What gets less attention is that the following year she published a collection called Uncanny Stories.  Indeed, she was astonishingly prolific, publishing fourteen books in the 1920s alone - and, as Uncanny Stories demonstrates, was not afraid to venture into different genres.

Truth be told, there is only really one story which stands out in this collection, and that is the first one: 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched'.  I'd read it a while ago, and hoped that the others in the collection would match up - sadly they didn't really.  The atmosphere, characters, and writing were all good, but they often follow essentially the same premise: a ghost returns to clear up some unfinished business, usually romantic. I suppose that is as good a ghost story prototype as any, and Sinclair is careful always to incorporate some psychological angle, but 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched' is excitingly original by comparison.  (Oh, and there is 'The Finding of the Absolute', which is a posthumous discussion about adultery and Kant... but that was mostly bizarre.)

The term 'uncanny' had only recently (four years earlier) been used as the title to an influential essay by Freud ('Das Unheimliche') and it is likely that Sinclair deliberately chose her title to connect with his, especially given her interest in psycho-analysis.  But the relationship between sexuality and the supernatural is not hidden in 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched'.

The story concerns Harriott who, like her near-namesake Harriett Frean, misses out on an early chance at love.  No further opportunities present themselves until, after her father's death, she embarks upon an affair with a married man, Oscar.  They spend a fortnight together in the Hotel Saint Pierre, Paris, and the affair drags on... and on...

She tried hard to believe that she was miserable because her love was purer and more spiritual than Oscar's; but all the time she knew perfectly well she had cried from pure boreom. She was in love with Oscar, and Oscar bored her.  Oscar was in love with her, and she bored him.  At close quarters, day in and day out, each was revealed to the other as an incredible bore.

At the end of the second week she began to doubt whether she had ever been really in love with him.

When Harriott wonders whether or not she could marry Oscar, she thinks 'Marriage would be the Hotel Saint Pierre all over again, without any possibility of escape.'  Little does she realise the fate that awaits her after her death... Although she lives many years after the end of her affair, even becoming a deaconess, after her death it is Oscar she sees.

The rest of the story is hauntingly surreal, and incredibly filmic.  It would make a superb short animated feature, actually - think Tim Burton meets Salvador Dali.  Harriott keeps escaping Oscar, running through past memories of a church, her village, her childhood home and garden... but every corner she turns, the rooms and streets rearrange themselves into the corridor of the Parisian hotel.  Sinclair writes this so well, vividly and visually.  I thought that Jean de Bosschere's illustration, which accompanies it, gives a good idea of what Sinclair was trying to convey:

Ineluctably Harriott is forced back to the scene of her loveless affair, overriding everything else she has done.

"In the last death we shall be shut up in this room, behind that locked door, together.  We shall life here together, for ever and ever, joined so fast that even God can't put us asunder.  We shall be one flesh and one spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other."

"Why? Why?" she cried.

"Because that's all that's left us.  That's what you made of love."

It is unpopular these days for a work of fiction to have a moral; the much-fated quality of 'openmindedness' has led to people being extremely closed-minded in this area.  It was pretty unpopular for stories to have morals even in the 1920s, but Sinclair has dared to.  The story is not so much a warning against adultery as a cry against sexual relationships where there is no love - as such I think the story is very resonant today, and chilling in ways that Gothicised tales of horror cannot be.  It's a shame that the rest of Uncanny Stories is fairly pedestrian - entertaining and diverting enough, but never experimental.  But I do recommend you track down 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched', in or out of this collection.  In fact, you can read a pdf version here...

Barter Books!

I'm back!  Hope you had a good week - I was dashing all over the place, from the south coast to the northern reaches of England (so, er, the distance some of you pop out for milk, in the larger countries of this world) speaking at a conference and attending my very lovely friend Lorna's wedding.  Best day ever!  But of a more literary nature, I paid a visit to Barter Books in Alnwick (pronounced Annick).  Lots of friends and family had told me that it's brilliant, and it was unlikely that I'd be in the area again for a while - so I went to visit.

Barter Books is inside an old railway station and is also famed for re-discovering the Keep Calm and Carry On posters (you can read more about them here).  The inside is quite wonderful - not only is it capacious, it has a mural of many authors, and a model railway going around the top of the bookshelves (which you should be able to see in the third photo below.)  Here are some selected photos...

But what you really want to know, of course, is how I have broken my Lenten fast with a haul of books!  Here is what I got: (as always - comments, please!)

A Case of Human Bondage - Beverley Nichols
Although I have a stack of Nichols' books unread, this might be the first I end up reading.  It's about W. Somerset Maugham, and a response to his apparent character assassination of his wife.  Sounds very strange, and an enticing literary spat.

Three To See The King - Magnus Mills
I've enjoyed the two Mills books I've read, to differing extents, but this one went onto my list when I read Kim's review of it.

Mr. Pim Passes By - A.A. Milne
I already have this in a collection, but I spotted the acting edition of the play, and thought it would be fun to have a copy of it - complete with notes from someone who played Mr. Pim himself.

Make Me An Offer - Wolf Mankowitz
I read this novella about antiques a while ago, and thought it was great, but didn't have a copy.  Now I have a signed one!

All Done From Memory - Osbert Lancaster
Looks like fun - words and images from one of the best cartoonists, and one of my favourite periods.

A Way of Life, Like Any Other - Darcy O'Brien
I probably would have picked this up anyway, because I love a NYRB edition with a fab cover, but I also vaguely remembered reading a review of it somewhere... probably Thomas's.

Recovery - Stephen Benatar
When I Was Otherwise - Stephen Benatar
The Man on the Bridge - Stephen Benatar
Like quite a few bloggers, I read and much admired Stephen Benatar's Wish Her Safe at Home, and couldn't resist picking up three of his novels cheaply.  And signed, no less, although I rather get the impression than it would be more difficult to find copies of these novels which weren't signed.

The Ha-Ha - Jennifer Dawson
Someone recommend this... who?  You?  I have a weakness for Virago Modern Classics about mental fragility, and this one even won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (hmm.. maybe that could be my challenge next year?  Read the JTBM prizewinners?)

The Odd Women - George Gissing
At least half the people who pop by here have recommended I read this, not least Darlene, and now I'm one step closer!

Authors on Authors (Part 3)

A lot of books I'm mentioning this year seem either to be about Jane Austen or by Sylvia Townsend Warner... so it is appropriate that one of them is Jane Austen by Sylvia Townsend Warner!  It's in the same Writers and Their Work series as Pamela Hansford Johnson's pamphlet, mentioned yesterday, and I'll write a similarly swift post about it.

PHJ on ICB nabbed the Century of Books slot for 1951, so STW on JA will just have to wait on the sidelines... but I rather suspect it will appeal to more of you.  Austen has more adoring fans than Dame Ivy, but are also significantly more spoilt for choice... This is, perhaps, hardly the only or foremost resource for information about Austen's life and work, but I am a sucker (as this mini-series demonstrates) for authors talking about authors.  The combination of Warner and Austen is my favourite yet, and I loved reading Warner's thoughts on the various novels.  She more or less bypasses biographical detail, which was fine by me - there are plenty of other places to go for that.  Instead we get to read Warner's insightful responses to Austen's work.  She doesn't propose dramatic or revisionist readings of the novels, but there are lots of gems along the way.  I loved this:

though sense distinguishes Elinor Dashwood and sensibility her sister Marianne, the contrast is between two ways of behaving rather than between two ways of feeling

and, a bit longer, this:

Of all Jane Austen's novels, Emma must fully conveys the exhiliration of a happy writer. As the arabesques of the plot curl more intricately, as the characters emerge and display themselves, and say the very things they would naturally say, the reader - better still, the re-reader - feels a collaborating glow.  Above all, it excels in dialogue: not only in such tours de force as Miss Bates being grateful for apples, Mrs. Elton establishing her importance when she pays her call at Hartfield, but in the management of dialogue to reveal the unsaid; as when Mr. John Knightley's short-tempered good sense insinuates a comparison with his brother's drier wit and deeper tolerance; or as in the conversation between Mr. Knightley and Emma about Frank Churchill, whom neither of them know except by repute: Emma is sure he will be all that he should be, Mr. Knightley's best expectation is "well grown and good-looing, with smooth, plausible maners" - and by the time they have done, it is plain that Emma is not prepared to fall in love with Frank Churchill, and that Mr. Knightley has been, for a long time, deeply and uncomfortably in love with Emma.

It is a shame, given Warner's sensitive and alert reading of Austen's writing, that she does not recognise the irony dripping when Austen wrote about her 'little bit (two Inches long) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour.'  Read in context - or even out of context -  it is clear that Austen has tongue firmly in cheek, and it's curious that Warner (herself so often ironic) does not spot this.  Never mind.

What I think I love most about Warner's writing in any context - her novels, letters, this pamphlet - is her exuberant use of imagery.  I probably mention it every time I review something by her, but it is delicious - usually quite surreal, but somehow fitting, and often animalistic.  She writes extensively about Austen's juvenilia, and says that they 'have a ringing brilliancy, like the song of a wren'.  Lovely!  And later she writes:

G.H. Lewes, when he recommended Charlotte Bronte to "follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen's mild eyes", was unaware of Lady Susan, where Miss Austen's eyes are those of a hunting cat. 

Oh, Warner - you and cats!  She can turn anything around to cats, given enough time - and is thus, in my eyes, a kindred spirit.

As I said earlier, there are many other places to read about Austen.  This pamphlet was issued at a time when a more or less complete bibliography could still be compiled (and one is included - with less than three pages of critical material) but now it proliferates.  The reason I would recommend Jane Austen by Sylvia Townsend Warner amongst this extensive canon is for the particular insight one excellent novelist is able to shed upon another.  STW and JA have been perfectly matched.

Authors on Authors (Part 2)

A series of pamphlets called Writers and Their Work was issued by British Book News in the early 1950s, and I happen to have got my hands on two of them.  In fact, they were amongst the books I bought during Project 24.  As you'll be gathering from this week (as if you didn't already know) I love authors writing about authors - especially when both sides of the equation are authors whom I love.  I. Compton Burnett by Pamela Hansford Johnson was a no-brainer for me - I love ICB, and I like PHJ, so I had to get hold of this.  Plus it ticks off 1951 on A Century of Books in under fifty pages.  I'll try to make my post appropriately brief.

I bang on about Dame Ivy quite a bit here - basically, I want everyone to try her, and I've resigned myself to the fact that at least four-fifths of those who give Ivy a whirl will be unimpressed.  But the final fifth... oh, boy, we love her!  As Hansford Johnson writes, 'She is not to be mildly liked or disliked.  She is a writer to be left alone, or else to be made into an addiction.'  Reading this pamphlet has made this addict desperate to read another ICB novel, and I imagine it won't be long before I'm writing about one.  I love reading another author's enthusiasm for ICB, especially when she describes so perfectly what it is that I love about the Ivester.  (Sorry.  That won't happen again.)

The peculiar charm of Miss Compton-Burnett's novels, the charm that has won her not merely admirers but addicts, lies in her speaking of home-truths.  She achieves this by a certain fixed method.  One character propounds some ordinary, homely hypocrisy, the kind of phrase from which mankind for centuries has had his comfort and his peace of mind.  Immediately another character shows it up for the fraud it is, and does it in so plain and so frightful a fashion that one feels the sky is far more likely to fall upon the truth-teller than the hypocrite.  In these books there is always someone to lie and someone to tell the truth; the power of light and the power of darkness speaking antiphonally, with a dispassionate mutual understanding.

I can't add much to that, except 'agreed!'  A perceptive reader is always such a joy to read - that's why we love blogs, isn't it? - and Hansford Johnson writes as a reader, rather than a critic.  She shares the joy of the ICB addict; she recommends which novel to start with, and which to save for later; she even writes what amount to mini blog reviews of each novel - and, be warned, she gives away most of the plot, although plot is easily the least essential ingredient of a Compton-Burnett novel.  Drastic and shocking events occur, but only incidental to a lengthy discussion about grammar or, as PHJ points out above, the hypocrisy of a common phrase.  There is the occasional sense that PHJ wrote this quickly and could have done with editing a bit - one particular sentiment about service being unpleasant is repeated three times in 43 pages - but we can forgive her that.

What makes this pamphlet even more intriguing is that it was written in the middle of Ivy Compton-Burnett's career.  In 1951 she still had seven novels yet to write, including my introduction to her, Mother and Son.  So this is not the place to go for the final say on Dame Ivy's work, but it is fascinating to read a response in media res, as it were.


There is one description in this pamphlet which I will cherish - which so perfectly sums up ICB's peculiar genius, and which I will finish on.  (Come back tomorrow for the final in this mini-series of Authors on Authors - and one which is rather less niche.)

This is why Miss Compton-Burnett's writing appears so strange to the reader who comes upon it without warning, a gentle tea-cosy madness, a coil of vipers in a sewing-basket.

Authors on Authors (Part 1)

I'm away this week, off up to Newcastle to give a conference paper, then to one of very my best friends' wedding in Worcester at the weekend (very exciting!) so I've prepared a mini-series of posts to appear in my absence.  It's not another lot of My Life in Books, I'm afraid, but it isn't too far away... the next three posts will be on books about books.  Or, more precisely, authors discussing authors: each of the three books/pamphlets are about famous authors, by our sort of middlebrow authors.  Fun!

First up, and taking the spot for 1943 in A Century of Books, is Talking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern.  My housemate Mel gave this to me for my birthday in 2010 (thanks, Mel!) knowing how much I'd enjoyed its sequel, More Talk Of Jane Austen.  Yes, I'm doing these things the wrong way around, but it doesn't much matter which order you read these books in - except that I would argue Talking of Jane Austen is even better.

The book is divided into fifteen essays, alternatively by Kaye-Smith and Stern.  Proceedings kick off with 'Introducing Sheila Kaye-Smith to Jane Austen' and 'Introducing G.B. Stern to Jane Austen', where our esteemed authoresses recount how they first came to read Austen - sheepishly admitting their early disregard of her, and triumphantly rejoicing in the moments (both with Emma, incidentally) where they discovered their lasting affinity with Jane.  Their love of Jane shines through every paragraph - this is an appreciation, but one from calm hearts and careful minds.  They do not run mad nor faint, rather they love both wisely and well.

To enter that world is to visit a congenial set of friends, and I still find that in their company I lose my own cares, much as I lost them on my first visit, thirty years ago.  Jane Austen is the perfect novelist of escape - of legitimate escape, such as are our holidays.  She does not transport one into fantasy but simply into another, less urgent, set of facts.  She tells no fairy-tale which might send us back dazzled and reeling to our contacts with normal life, but diverts us from our preoccupations with another set of problems no less real than our own, but making no personal demands upon us.  In fact it is her realism which provides the escape, for the fantastic and improbable only irritate certain minds and send them hurrying back unrefreshed to their own business.

Amongst the topics addressed are the education of female characters; a re-evaluation (now a fairly standard argument) or Henry and Maria Crawford; dress and food in the novels; the device of letter-writing... a wide-ranging group of intriguing minutiae.

Perhaps the bravest section is where Stern and Kaye-Smith turn their attention to characters which they consider failed.  Avert your eyes if you consider St. Jane to be infallible.  Even more bravely, this is how Stern prefixes the discussion:

When an author fails with one of her characters, it must, I think, be defined as a lack of perception, a certain bluntness of outlook where this particular character is concerned.  For where the author is aware she has failed, she will be compelled to do something about it: alter it, cut it, add to it, so that it will remain an uneven lop-sided conception with some irrelevant good scenes and some hopeless; showing traces of exasperated tinkering.  Where a character is a plain failure, evenly spread, we can usually detect some slight complacency in its creator.

And whose names are suggested?  Well, Stern and Kaye-Smith cannot agree on some of them, but amongst their nominations are Colonel Brandon, Eleanor Tilney, Lady Russell, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.  Since those final three characters are amongst my favourite in all the novels, I shall maintain a dignified silence on the topic.  (How could they!)  Ahem.

Perhaps the most fun section is at the end, where is all becomes something of a miscellany.  There are twenty pages of incidental comments and observations, or thoughts which were not quite sufficient to be developed into a whole chapter.  Here's just one of 'em, courtesy of Sheila Kaye-Smith:

No two authors, you might think, would be less likely to have their work mistaken for each other's than Jane Austen and Aldous Huxley.  Nevertheless I have recently seen a quotation from the author of Pride and Prejudice attributed to the author of Eyeless in Gaza.  It was in a review of the screen version of Pride and Prejudice, for the script of which Hollywood, with its fine sense of fitness, had made Mr. Huxley responsible.  The critic, having congratulated him on the complete suppression of his literary personality in this task, goes on to say that one piece of dialogue, however, stands out unmistakably as his own.  He then quotes Sir William Lucas's commendation of dancing as "one of the first refinements of polished society", with Darcy's reply: "Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world - every savage can dance."

If you're not already a Janeite, this probably isn't a good place to start.   Indeed, you should probably have read all of Austen's books at least once before you even consider reading Talking of Jane Austen.  The authors are contentedly aware of this themselves, and welcome anyone (is it you?) who fits the description below:

We are not prowling round, my collaborator and myself, searching for converts; only for those insatiable legions who find the same mysterious pleasure as we do in talking Jane, discovering Jane, arguing Jane, quoting Jane, listing Jane, and for ever and ever marvelling at Jane and grateful for her legacy.

And so say all of us!

Half a Decade!

That's right - today Stuck-in-a-Book is five years old!

(photo source)

Thanks everyone who has made this such a fun and valuable part of my life over that time, whether you've been with me since day one or discovered me last week.  And, of course, thank you for making the whole bookish blogosphere such a joy, whether as bloggers or commenters or publishers.  To quote Miranda's Mum - such fun!

Easter tidings

I'm off to Somerset for a long weekend, so have a wonderful Easter when it comes.  Rejoice, rejoice!

(picture source)