My new book has just been published on Amazon. The link is below:

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Apprentice-Victorian-Terror-Supernatural/dp/1602644829/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259410467&sr=8-3

VANITY FAIR

I have just indulged in a rather interesting experiment. While reading Thackeray's novel, I've also been able to watch the six part BBC serialization starring Natasha Little as Becky Sharp. I'll comment on this BBC serial later--but first to the novel itself.

Well, it's a very good novel. Certainly one of the best from the Victorian period which it parodies so beautifully. Becky Sharp is a fine literary creation and the personal embodiment of that "Vanity Fair" which Thackeray, on the one hand, appears to despise so much, while winking at us in happy glee and suggesting "it ain't such a bad place after all" (by gad!)on the other. All the main characters are fully realized and mercilessly exposed in their weaknesses by the unrelenting author.

Becky, as I have said, is the very embodiment of the superficial, and finally worthless, attractions on offer in the pitiless and unrelenting world of "Vanity Fair" which raises people up for a moment, only to mercilessly crush them forever after they have strutted for their little pompous moment on the high society stage. Amelia's Major Dobbin is the only really honourable character in the book--and he is continually trampled over by all the bright young things who want to make their momentary splash in "Vanity Fair". Thackeray describes him as a "spooney" and, indeed, he spends most of the novel as Amelia's platonic lover who dare not ask for more than the little she will give him. Becky Sharp is the real hero, heroine or "anti-heroine" of this novel "without a hero". She manipulates everyone with the most perfect judgement and lives for the joy of Vanity Fair's thousand intrigues. Her husband Rawdon's unexpected escape from a debtor's house and subsequent discovery of his wife making love to the Marquis of Steyne (and his resultant thrashing of that gentleman) is probably the most dramatic moment in the book. However, Becky--if not her husband or the Marquis--is able to move beyond even this catastrophe.

Vanity Fair is not without faults for the modern reader. Sometimes Thackeray indulges in page after page of almost nonsensical parody of the contemporary society of his day and this comes across (in the 21st century) as even worse than Swift's most obscure rants in Gulliver's Travels on the Tory/Whig politics of his time. Thankfully, Thackeray doesn't usually detain his reader long in such tedious environs, but soon gets his marvellously readable story moving again.

As I wrote earlier, I have been watching the 1998 BBC adaptation of Vanity Fair while actually reading the novel itself--and it's been quite a revealing experience. Of course, one sympathises with the person responsible for making the adaptation. How is it possible to condense the action of more than 800 pages into a 6 hour serial? No doubt it's an impossible task, but I was, mostly, impressed with the beeb's minor success. The adaptation is well done, though it's not without blemish and, most notably, substitutes some of Thackeray's prejudices for several of our own time. For example,(in the novel) Becky's husband, Rawdon, thrashes Lord Steyne with his open hand to make the point that he regards him as a coward and expects to be satisfied in a duel. The beeb substituted a drunken head-butt for this subtle assault--presumably because they thought this was more acceptable to late 20th century British yob culture. Again, the serialization accurately includes a black manservant in the Sedley family. However, he (the black manservant) is given a far larger part in the adaptation than in Thackeray's novel (where, indeed, he is hardly more than a wretched slave). Wouldn't it have been better to simply cut this character out altogether rather than have him purposelessly wandering through every episode full of a somewhat threatening "joie de vivre"? Nevertheless, as I wrote earlier, the adaptation is probably ALMOST as good as it could have been in the circumstances. In particular, Natasha Little is quite enchanting as Rebecca Sharp.

So now I move on in my reading to weightier matter: "The Brothers Karamazov" awaits!

THE "TOP TEN"


For what it's worth (and that's not much!) my own "Top Ten" list of novels would be as follows. Naturally, I only include books I've personally read. The list might change as blanks in my reading are filled in. For example, I hope shortly to get started on "The Brothers Karamazov". There is a little voice in the back of my mind which suggests that perhaps dreamweaver55 is right about Madam Bovary being overrated. However, I'm going to stick with it at number three as it IS a wonderful example of the realist novel, and predates Tolstoy's great novels.

1. War and Peace
2. Anna Karenina
3. Madam Bovary
4. Crime and Punishment
5. Ulysses
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Great Gatsby
8. David Copperfield
9. Bleak House
10. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

THE GREATEST EVER NOVEL?

Well, recently, in an American poll of writers, "Anna Karenina" was voted the greatest novel of all time. It is difficult to understand why. Certainly, it's a very good novel: but the best? No, I don't think so. It's certainly not as profound as Tolstoy's other masterpiece, "War and Peace". At the time of Anna Karenina's publication, several critics dismissed it as a tale of self-indulgent adultery in high places. Of course, this is too extreme and simplistic a view, yet it has a kernel of truth in it as well. None of the characters are truly sympathetic. Anna leaves her husband and son for the somewhat characterless Count Vronsky, and derides and scorns Karenin for his attempts to hold the marriage together. After that, with somewhat breathtaking audacity, she insists on a divorce (which Karenin refuses to give) and the right to have her son live with Vronsky and her (it might be an issue today, but it was a non-issue in the Tsarist Russia of the time: the state and the church were absolutely on the side of the wronged husband). The subplot of the novel which involves the husband of Vronsky's former love, Levin, also fails to produce a wholly appealing character. One feels that Levin, with his spiritualty, belief in the land and the peasant and agonised search for spiritual truth, is the character Tolstoy most holds up for our admiration. However, he frequently comes across as a misanthropic bore whose occasional spells of overt sentimentalism do much to repel the reader. Still, his final realisation that spiritual truth is different from and separate to reason, will strike most readers as profound (at least in the way it is worked out in the novel). This is contrasted with Anna's very limited final sensibility that tells her everyone in the world really hates each other; and she dies with spite in her heart, believing--correctly--that her suicide will be the total ruin of Vronsky--and that this will be her final revenge on her lover for not loving her enough (though how he could have loved her more, it's difficult to see).

Contrast all this with "War and Peace" which has as its main theme the movement of history itself and examines such ideas as how much free will man really has. The pre-Marxist view expressed in the novel that great cycles of history have deeprooted causes beyond the ambitions of Kings and Princes, was striking for its time and gives expression to a philosophical view of history that still makes sense for many people, even today. Moreover, the novel has a "cast of thousands" and historical characters such as Napoleon, the Russian commander, Kutuzov, and Tsar Alexander himself, are compellingly portrayed. Furthermore, the fictitious characters are more sympathetically drawn than in "Anna Karenina" (especially in the case of the lethargic, but likeable, Count Bezuhof). Finally, the only explanation I can think of for putting "Anna Karenina" in a higher position in the list of 'greatest ever novels' than "War and Peace", is--the likely enough one--that far more readers have reached the end of "Anna Karenina" than the end of "War and Peace" (which is 500 pages longer, and intellectually more demanding). The top 3 novels in this interesting American list (which never included a single novel by Dostoyevsky, but yet found space for several far weaker novels by American writers) were:

1. Anna Karenina

2. Madame Bovary

3. War and Peace

My own top 3 would be the same--but in a different order:

1. War and Peace

2. Anna Karenina

3. Madam Bovary

All in all, a great triumph for the realist novel!

WILKIE COLLINS

I've been laid up with a broken ankle for the last 8 weeks and so I've finally had recourse to the large collection of Victorian ebooks I've collected from the web over the last couple of years. In particular I've been reading the works of WC--10 of his novels so far. I've been struck by several points and, in a skeleton form, I write them below:

1. What a story-teller! He easily beats Dickens when it comes to successful, labyrinthine plotting. The two men were friends, but it's easy to see that a fundamental difference in attitude to the construction of a novel would have set up tensions between the two men. For Collins, a novel is basically as good as the plot--though his characterization can be convincing too. Dickens, in contrast, believes a novel to be largely based on characterization and emotional sympathy with the characters. Plot is secondary and, in Dickens' case, often haphazard. Both approaches can work, but in many ways it is Dickens' approach that has aged the worse: his lack of emphasis on plot gave him too much time to indulge in a fault common to most Victorian novelists: maudlin sentimentality!

2. Collins makes good use of another staple to Victorian novelists: the use of many voices to tell the narrative. Most of his novels are a series of diaries, journals and letters written by various characters within the story. If handled well, this is a good technique for telling a story. The problem comes when the character is too limited to his or her social station to fully explicate exactly what's going on. Another drawback can be the very choppy nature of the narrative, jerking to and fro between different voices.

3. Collins is by no means unique in the Victorian world for his belief in providence or destiny. However, his books have the seeming fault of mostly being constructed on a whole series of unlikely coincidences. If two people knew each other in Italy or elsewhere on the continent, they are absolutely certain to meet again, purely by chance (or is it destiny?), in the streets of London. Anyone who has a belief in destiny or karma will easily find a way to forgive this particular idiosyncracy, but there is no denying that in the context of a novel, too many coincidences piled on top of each other do begin to jar.

4. As in most Victorian novels, the need to conform to a very conventional morality does, at times, make for heavy reading. Fortunately, Collins' plots are usually so delightfully byzantine that one doesn't need to dwell on this for long periods (Collins himself kept two women and had 3 children--all out of wedlock).

5. Another source of conflict with Dickens must have been Collins' essentially upper class background. His father was a painter and fellow of the Royal Academy. What a contrast with Dickens' "bootshining" background! In terms of his writing, Collins' social position meant he was always happier describing the doings of upper class and aristocratic society than the ambience of the common man. Many of his novels have a well-to-do, country-house setting.

6. More than most Victorian writers, Collins desrves to have his reputation re-evaluated. He wrote 30 novels--and a good two-thirds of them should still be available in cheap editions (though the advent of the Internet means most of his books are now available absolutely free).

WAS THIS THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND QUIPS?

It seems that Professor Stanley Wells has decided that an Elizabethan portrait that has been in the possession of the Irish Cobbe family since the early 18th century, is the only surviving lifetime portrait of Shakespeare. In his own words:

"The evidence that it represents Shakespeare and that is was done from life, though it is circumstantial, is in my view overwhelming. I feel in little doubt that this is a portrait of Shakespeare, done from life and commissioned by the Earl of Southampton and believe it could certainly be the basis for the engraving seen in the First Folio."

Now the second picture, above, is the Droueshot engraving that appeared in the First Folio. Am I the only person who sees little or no resemblance between these two pictures? In the first place, the Shakespeare of the engraving is bald and certainly middle-aged, while the recently discovered portrait (bottom) is of a younger man with a handsome head of hair. Perhaps, then, it could be Shakespeare from 20 years earlier? Not so. The portrait has been dated to 1610--or just 6 years before the poet died. Did Shakespeare lose all his hair and age so much in just 6 years? It is also important to remember that the engraving--dull as it may be--appeared with the First Folio and was approved by Heminges and Condell who knew Shakespeare personally. It MUST have some likeness to the real Shakespeare as many who read the First Folio--beyond Heminges and Condell--had known Shakespeare when he was alive. The first well-known picture of Shakespeare, above, is the Chandos portrait. This is the portrait of Shakespeare looking a tad bohemian with an earring and open collar. Now this has been proved to have been painted around 1610 (about the same date as the new portrait) and is usually credited to John Taylor. There is certainly a likeness between the Droushot engraving and the Chandos portrait, even if the portrait is far more complimentary. Both men are bald and probably around the same age. However, it takes a real stretch of the imagination to see any connection between the dandy of Professor Wells's new portrait and the Chandos picture. In spite of this, the whole saga began when a latter-day member of the Cobbe family viewed the Chandos portrait in London and decided that there was an uncanny similarity between his own picture of an unknown Elizabethan and Shakespeare. He eventually went on to claim that the Chandos Shakespeare had been copied from his own earlier original. Now, one thing that is absolutely clear is that Shakespeare during the latter part of his life was bald or balding. Besides the Droueshot engraving, we also have the bust of Shakespeare in Holy Trinity church to give us evidence of this. Remember, this would have been seen and approved of by his widow and family. Of course, like the Droushot engraving, the bust does Shakespeare no favors and makes him look like a possibly pedantic bank clerk--yet these images were approved of by the family and friends of Shakespeare. The Chandos portrait is more in the mould of what we expect an Elizabethan poet to look like--but it is still, as regards likeness, in the same ball park as the Droueshot engraving and the Holy Trinity bust. The new Cobbe portrait is totally dissimilar

VERDICT: ABSOLUTELY UNCONVINCED!

PERICLES PRINCE OF TYRE: 6--It's difficult to believe that Shakespeare had much to do with this farrago. The play begins with Pericles challenging for the hand of the King of Antioch's daughter. Only the suitor who can answer the King's riddle can become his daughter's husband. Pericles correctly sees that the answer to the riddle is that Antiochus is in an incestuous relationship with his daughter--and to flee the King's wrath Pericles escapes from Antioch and then leaves Tyre itself. This is effectively the start of the real play as this early theme dies during Pericles' travels, and he later marries, becomes father to a daughter, and loses both wife and daughter in a storm at sea. Neither, however, dies and Pericles is later reunited with both. The plot simply doesn't hang together and there is little poetry of any real merit in the play. I feel fairly certain that Shakespeare had either nothing or very little to do with the writing of this drama.

I give it 6 only because of a strong performance as Pericles by Mike Gwilym--who earlier starred as Berowne in the BBC's "Love's Labour's Lost".