The Book of Months by EF Benson (1903)

 This one is well-known as a contributor to the story of Benson as a bad author. My interest lies in how accurate that story is. It's certainly a mixed affair. This purports to be a record of a recent year in Benson's life, presented in twelve essays, one for each month. These have a personal-philosophical musing quality, where the author recounts experiences which challenge him, or contrastingly confirm his beliefs. The early part of the year conforms to this prospectus; but when, during the summer months, he is taken up by recent memories of the love of a woman, her marriage to one of his closest friends, that friend's death in the Boer War, and her subsequent death in childbirth, the focus narrows greatly. And then as the year closes he meets a relative of hers who looks a lot like her, and love comes to him again, this time returned. December figures its bliss. By modern standards, this last piece is mawkish indeed, though that criticism is too easy to dash off. Of course, the elephant in the room is the now-current story of Benson's homosexuality. My exposure to this in any detail came from a reading, long ago, of Brian Masters' biography. I only remember it vaguely, but there was a suggestion of the fact that it was a tendency upon which Benson never acted, regarding the sexual act as "beastly". I wonder whether his sexual history was quite complicated, with internal conflict seething - he was still a young man when he wrote this. And all this fed through a classicist mindscape, whereby war raged in the image of the chaste love of beauty at odds with its potential physical results. And of course the times and Benson's upper middle class milieu of boarding schools and single-sex education, and what no doubt that will have exposed him to, even further snarling the picture. What the literary world needs, dare I say it (!), is a proper psychological study of Benson. The style and content here is the other issue, and I can see why first-past-the-post types have seen this very simply as a bad book, typifying the weaknesses inherent in the author. I think it's a bit more complicated than that. It does have a somewhat self-satisfied air, where he breezily dismisses subtle explanations, and opts for homespun moralities. At other times, though, he begins to push at the envelope a little, and sees himself as much less certain, and subject to bad impulses. It is carefully kept anodyne, in the spirit of his age, where decorousness is vital. What's interesting is examining the account-book of this piece in the light of its times and the personality of its author - given when it was written, and by whom, how much is that envelope pushed? How self-critical is it? And the conclusion one can come to is 'a little'. It's not the atrocious book some claim it to be, but neither is it markedly revealing. It's a cautious book, which, by its own faulty internal compass, claims much more challenging territory than it discovers.