Orbiting The Swan Thieves

There should be space in the title The Swan Thieves for a joke about how the book stole hours of my life. See, it's too far out of orbit. Also, I feel a bit mean saying that - it's a bit harsh and I could have chosen to steal my time back. Am I a sop? I am overthinking again, wasting more precious time, but this is why you love me. Well, you would if you met me. What does my foible have to do with a joke that spins in a wide orbit?

Scientifically, the joke couldn't sweep too far an orbit from the book (which we're assuming is the centre of the system), because once it moved out of the centre's 'range', it would careen into space like an asteroid. So either: the joke is skimming the very edge of the book's sphere of influence or it is floating around, unconnected with anything.

More time, floating away.

Luckily this ramble careens us back into orbit: The Swan Thieves is, like its predecessor The Historian, an unconventional mystery. In Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, we chased the legend of Dracula - at arm's length because the sources of this legend are prone to mutilating people and I am squeamish. In her second release, I think the mystery is a painter's obsession with a woman who lived more than 100 years ago. He has a psychotic meltdown, tries to destroy a painting and then refuses to speak.

Because, obviously, all artists are, to put it nicely, crazy. (You'd hate to know what other words come to mind.) Obviously. The painter is a nicely rounded set of stereotypes, which is actually a relief from the painful touchy-feely-ness of the other characters and the unethical absurdities of a teacher hooking up with a student (I suspect because he needed food and shelter), and a psychiatrist marrying his patient's ex-girlfriend. Oh and so much more that I can't reveal without spoiling the plot.

I said, "I think" because halfway through the mystery shifts, although honestly I don't know where it went, nor do I really care. The mystery petered out, without a single vampire swishing around in the shadows. Imagine, an Impressionistic painting chasing you through a psychiatric hospital. Not a Cuckoo's Nest hospital but a clean and accommodating one. When you turn around, there is nothing behind you except for a hint of a frame and the flash of a brushstroke in the moonlight.

Maybe I'm biased by The Historian, and this novel isn't meant to be creepy. (Although, as I mentioned, it is creepy in other ways.) Maybe it is meant appeal to to readers of a more sensitive disposition, who are moved to tears by flowers blooming and children bullying each other on a playground. Maybe they fancy they are the epitome of another artist stereotype: the delicate waif writing dedications to urns and then dying. Poetically. Tragically.

Again, I feel I am being glib. At about 90% of the way through the book were a few pages in which I felt the author extended the promise of her first novel: her descriptions were more focused and so more was left to the reader's imagination. My glibness is a product of my disappointment in a novel of the same breeding of The Historian and with this potential. (This novel was more a book-club read than serious literary fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the writing catches you in its orbit and doesn't spend time describing your fellow jokes' eyebrows in epic poems first.)

The novel also reminded me of how much I used to enjoy painting and drawing. I even went out and bought a set of pencils. (Which has been opened and the pencils touched, you. Once. But once more than in 13 years.) So, despite my whinging about the amount of adjectives and adverbs and nonsense, some of it had an effect on this reader.

Recitation complete. No questions. We have all wasted enough time. I have appointments to keep: being chased down the corridors of a hospital and waning over a desk piteously. Eventually I'll have to choose one stereotype, I suppose.

Also, I'm distracted, dear reader. First, I have just started The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which I have been eyeing for years and found two days ago in a secondhand bookshop I often go to. On the one hand, the novel was originally written in Italian by a professor in particle physics; on the other hand, the first few chapters are underwhelming - not one paradox or brain-popping theorem or just the number 15 (my favourite). Let's bet on my final ruling. Because I am completely objective, I will be the bookie.

Second, I want to post about Ayn Rand's Anthem, but this is a heady topic, and my head is still annoyed. I used to look down on people who take her philosophies so seriously. I understand. Oh, I understand. Maybe you want to read it before my next post and you can share my annoyance. (If you empathise though, stay away. Only kidding. Let's discuss this and then someone will hold you down and I will smack you (I may need a few tries - my arms are my weak spot).)

I think we left orbit a while back.

The Historian and The Swan Thieves

What do William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Kostova have in common? Yes, they are all part of a Western aesthetic tradition, but so arguably are their 'ethnic' cousins. Yes, they all do have an 'a' in their first names. Schooling turns all of us into tame dogs, sitting to attention and staring hopefully when someone asks a question or utters a command, that the same someone will give us the answer, too, maybe a biscuit. So please, lean a little forward while I answer this uncontextualised and open question myself.

(I planned this.)

Here is what I learnt in three years of studying English literature: The Bible was the first printed work but plebs weren't allowed to (and couldn't) read said holy book. (Meaning that the priests could say whatever they wanted and so they did. Want to go to heaven? Pay me 500 shekels and I'll put in a good word. That's a good rate! This book here says 600 is the price for your soul. Limited time offer.)

Then along came Martin Luther (the German one), who nailed a piece of paper to the door that said that even the plebs should be allowed to read the Bible (even if they wouldn't because they had other things to do, like not starve) and see what the price of their souls are (unfortunately, there is no price list, but if you confess your sins, the priest will translate your sins into prayers for you). People died for the democratisation of the media. Just be glad the same hasn't happened with digital media. Oh wait, didn't someone just hang himself for this?

Luther's revolution is the Reformation. The Reformation is a handy bookmark for the rolling stone ancestry of contemporary literature, for today known as Post-modernism. Because like all good christenings, we name the baby after it has grown into an old person. This is when people realised that all that is written is not gold. (Gold is heavy. Even the Hulk would struggle with a bag full of this stuff. Maybe that's the real reason it's so valuable?)

But that was the German Reformation. Across the sea, England's revolution involved an obese wife-murderer and adulteress (do you know there is no male form of the noun?! Except expletives) swapping Catholicism for Protestantism. Anyway, the point is that Europe is not one cultural entity, with a single history, any more than Africa is. Everyone hear me?

Screen adaptation of Hamlet, 1990

So, the stone rolled into William Shakespeare and his infamous ilk, Christopher Marlowe. Both wrote and directed plays (a step ahead of the cops, because anything that didn't make money for the Crown was illegal. Kinda like the priests and their bribes) and plays (like movies, for the young 'uns) require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. Like in The Tempest (one of my least favourites fyi), we don't believe there is a ship, a storm and an island on the stage (duh, it's only big enough for one of those things).

Despite the haunting tragedies of Hamlet and Faust, Shakespeare and Marlowe were funny and self-deprecating (ok, no, not Marlowe) men. Like Luther handing round the Bible, these men wrote plays that spoke about themselves and addressed the audience directly. In Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, the characters stage their own plays, within the play, making us think about the nature of this play that we are watching. The one we paid (or were given comps) to see.

The Dessert: Harmony in Red (the Red Room), Henri Matisse, 1908

The two men die and enrich the soil, and Charlotte Bronte springs into being in an English moor somewhere. I have written all of this garbled and probably left of history post to get here. Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, that proto-feminist (yeah, right, and you'll see why), Gothic (but less so than Wuthering Heights, by her sister) novel that everyone studies in English undergrad. We slot both books in the Victorian shelf, above the Romantic shelf, which is a couple of shelves up from the Elizabethan shelf (stacked with Shakespeare's plays).

The stone of self-reflexism (it used to be a shard) has rolled down the slope and through many a Romantic novel. When it gets to the Bronte's house, it is gathering speed, and protective of their family (including an complex imaginary one that may or may not have survived their adolescence), all three give it a kick in turn, to make it spin faster. This metaphor has just become cryptic. Charlotte also uses her novel to think about itself - and I use the passive here for a reason.

Because she also asks us directly to break through the suspension of disbelief (that an orphan girl, much plagued by her cousin and prone to supernatural meetings, can become an au pair, fall in love with the father who feels the same way, and then discover his crazy (debatable) wife in the attic (I would also become crazy if you locked me in an attic. Crazy angry) and talk to the main character (which is itself a suspension of disbelief).

She says, just before the conclusion of the book: "Dear reader..." This book is not written in journal form, so... To reiterate, suspension of disbelief means involving yourself in the fantasy: there are no authors or readers or characters; for a certain period of time this fictional world and the assumptions necessary for it to exist (belief in ghosts or time travel or crazy women in attics) does exist. For the author or the character to talk to us, the readers, breaks that bond we all agreed to.

Interlude (perhaps make yourself some coffee and get a biscuit): this "Dear reader" is a plea for us to sympathise with Jane and accept her next set of choices. Feminist? Ha! If she has to plea, she considers herself guilty, so my judgement is unnecessary. But, just for the record, I do. I do judge.

What now? You figure it out. I wrote an essay on this, so you can work for the answer.

This is a long post, but Elizabeth Kostova writes long books and I have read the first and am reading the second, so you can read with me. Pay attention as you read and you will see 'Dear reader's sprouting from even the least fertile pages, like crime novels. Just splattered on the page like blood. Splattered, artlessly. I think Charlotte Bronte would rather move into the setting of Wuthering Heights, without Linton to bring some charm to it, than acknowledge these offspring.

I am reading The Swan Thieves at the moment. I mean 'reading' to imply that this is a long-term relationship and I am beginning to wonder whether the bumps and bruises are worth it. I can't say until I get to the end, so I can only rely on past history. This is not My Point, but the history is tedious, largely because of descriptions of people and places and trees and grass and hands and and and..., and because of the effeminate voice of the (male) main character and his tendency to fall in love with every woman he meets.

The history is also Kostova's first novel, The Historian. In hindsight the novel was probably also tedious and for the same reasons, but the main character is a) female (and therefore effeminate) and b) the daughter of a historian. The novel is a historical mystery novel and the mystery is the source of the legend of Dracula, which is fascinating no matter how many observations about hands, because each hand could provide a clue.

You can hear (not literally!) how worked up I am getting, right? Why? The protagonist follows a series of notes and letters, one of which begins: "To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history." My brain leaps the suspension bridge (har har) and I become the protagonist. Silly thing, it can't differentiate between the fictional 'you' and me 'you'. This is now my story and my inheritance, although I know I'm being manipulated, I see the bridge below me - but, wait, does this mean the protagonist is being manipulated too? We both know that Dracula is a novel built on an East European myth (all those countries being the same, right?). So what are we chasing?

Again, essay written, book read, your turn.

The history of literature is its own type of fiction. As is any history. I have identified what I want to see, to argue for the evolution of free thought in the Western world, as if this is a good thing. Well, really I'm arguing for a type of device used in literature that I find interesting and using history to support it. Or I am overthinking everything and writing tedious blog posts, and trying to justify my use of direct address, like 'you' and 'fool!'. Not that this fiction. Because I really think you should read Jane Eyre and agree she is not a feminist, or only a pseudo-feminist, and that maybe you should read The Historian because it's long but fun and engaging. There's even an audio book. Would the consequence of the direct address be the same in speech? Hmmmmm...