The Booker Longlist for 1910 - Second Instalment

Just a note firming out this process - the main aim is no less than to improve our cultural values by historical novel reading!

Reading that line above over makes me laugh, and yet, it's completely true. Strange thing, the modern journalistic scoff immediately comes to mind, appears so tenable, and yet isn't.

I don't think there's any question that what you read cultures your mind. It's the problem I have with the librarian-squeak when challenged about the low stuff they're seen as purveying: "At least they're reading!" At least they're reading........what, exactly?

I would challenge that on two levels. Nothing could teach me more clearly for one thing that fiction that is called shamefully popular in one era can be appreciated at its true worth in a succeeding one. The epitome of the 20s, Michael Arlen was pounded in his time - the reader of These Charming People these days is struck by the power of his charm and erudition and, in this collection particularly, the originality of his voice. Similarly, the late Victorians Mary E Braddon and Rhoda Broughton were pilloried - reading their works is a revelation today.

To say nothing of that favourite of all whipping-posts, Mary Webb, a truly fascinating successor to Hardy and Emily Bronte. She became the butt of a thousand jokes after her early death in 1927, energised mainly by two things. One was popularity - Stanley Baldwin had praised her to the skies and virtually single-handedly guaranteed her phenomenal sales through the 30s. The other was of course Cold Comfort Farm, whose parallel success guaranteed the satire's author, Stella Gibbons, her moment in the limelight. Cold Comfort Farm no doubt deserves its continuing fame. But I could have wished for more readers now for The Golden Arrow, Gone to Earth and The House in Dormer Forest, the three I've read by Mary Webb, to say nothing of some of the most delicate nature essays ever written in her seminal The Spring of Joy. To be satirised in this way should be a weird kind of compliment, and I hope Stella Gibbons thought of it at least a little that way. It's time now, 80 years on, for us to understand that and read both Gibbons and her targets in full measure. The other major targets were, I think, TF Powys and Sheila Kaye-Smith, though I'm sure there are other examples. Powys' work is a tower of achievement in the field of goat-eyed Christian-Pagan fable - just read Brynmill Press' Mock's Curse to taste a talent that is utterly original and largely ignored - exactly what this exercise is about. Most modern writing barely exists on the same plane. I'd love to see what a creative writing course might make of him! The reactions would be priceless. Not that Powys was ever popular, to get back to the original point.

So I would say that a lot of the fiction that public libraries are purveying may well be of a great deal more worth than is credited. The other level on which to challenge that statement is the mind-enculturation one. Given the severely contestable statement that at least a goodly part of library borrowings are of trash, shouldn't that matter? Let's get down to it, I say. What is trash, in a literary context? A little contrarily, I would say that there's a lot of self-indulgence out there in so-called literary authors. Seeing crud for crud, I would call that, to its measure, trash. The straightforwardness of an unabashed storyteller like Joyce Carol Oates (who has a load of other faults, don't get me wrong) in something like We Were the Mulvaneys far excels the fatuous dullness of a novel like The Way of the Women by Marlene Van Niekirk (which has its good elements, I feel bound to point out). Niekirk's largely grim self-involvement and needless obfuscation is bad quality, barely put. But these are literary authors, aren't they? The trash that public library-detractors talk about is formula-fiction, I think, when brass tacks are finally got down to. I can't say that I have a problem with how a novel is made, as long as it's made well. I think one needs to look a little deeper than that. Can't help feeling that whether a writer is fascinating or not will depend on their natural talent, if that's not too Luddite a phrase. If a Mills and Boon novelist has the goods, they'll go the distance. What I'm after is a clearer recognition of the nature of the goods.

I think it is worthwhile to think about this using an analogy. Think of the world as an open landscape. It's cooling, and as night-time comes bonfires are lit all over. The authors we have available to us are placed in the prized 'storyteller's place', one next to each fire. We all wander, and as we find something which captures us, stay to listen and keep warm. Which authors have the capacity to pull the audience? (To return again to the original point: from whom is our mind culture being constructed?) I think Marlene Van Niekirk's fire would be virtually deserted, and I think Joyce Carol Oates' audience would be legion, at her best. I recognise that this will be seen as over-reductionist, that this doesn't take account of the reality of the novel as more, quite literally, than a campfire yarn. But I'm saying that I think some 'reduction', actually discernment, is necessary. That returning to the nuts and bolts is not a conservative flatulence, it's a grounding measure. We need to rediscover the essence; if you like, we need to regain our appreciation of the forever in culture. At the moment, we are floundering around in superstructural philosophizing.

So, to sum up, I think a new era should be announced - that the time has come for a rediscovery of the essential in fiction. I think that our appreciation should be fed with a steady stream of material from the past, to help us realise exactly what human beings are capable of in literary terms - these authors remind us that our multifarious genre-addicted over-marketed modern literature is quite a limited place, oddly. All that 'noise' - nothing could be more suspicious.......

The Booker Longlist for 1910 - First Instalment

This is inspired by a continuing wish to help my fellow human beings to an appreciation of the wider spaces of literature. I'm imagining a yearly prize given out by the Man group, current sponsors of the Booker Prize, to the best novel of 100 years ago. (Just think Man group, the authors are all dead, no prize money necessary!) A deliberate effort to get people reading these shots from another world, as it now seems, though it's supposed just to be an antecedent of this one.

My main aim, of course, being the nasty, rigid classicist that I am (ha ha) is to help readers of modern literature to an idea of what erudition is all about. Back then, they did it the hard and good way; now, we sludge around in physicalist grammatically-challenged navel-staring, goes the standard bleat. But that bleat at least partly has it right. I don't think literature is lost, but I do think that creative-writing-class-ism has taken over pretty appallingly. I think a lot of those who aspire to novel-writing today would be astounded by the minds of those who wrote a century ago:

'What do you mean you didn't follow the steps laid out in a self-help book?'

'How on earth did you think of that?'

'That's not the way to do it - it says so here.'

would no doubt be familiar refrains passing up and down the corridors of modern excellence.

Of course it's not as bad as all that. I desperately hope.

So, I envision the first award going to the best novel of its year, commercially successful or otherwise, in the opinion of the judges. (Who might they be? is another question.) Remember that the list needs to contain only novels for adults from the Empire (as it then was). So, no short stories, no children's books, no non-fiction and so on......

On those grounds, 1910 was a relatively quiet year. No Conrad, no Kipling, no Galsworthy, no James, no Hardy. Meredith had died the year before and his last unfinished novel, Celt and Saxon, was published this year, but I'm fairly sure unfinished shouldn't be allowed. But there were a few still appreciated novelists on the hustings.

The old guard of that time, meaning those whose main thrust of career is 19th century rather than 20th, is represented by five women and four men. Sensation novelist Mary E Braddon's Beyond These Voices came out now, as did an apparently fine later instalment in the fading career of Rhoda Broughton, The Devil and the Deep Sea. The oft-despised Marie Corelli produced an extraordinary fictional attack on the automobile entitled The Devil's Motor which no doubt fed into, and from, conservative hell-in-a-handcart prophecy. The sprightly EL Voynich's sequel to her renowned 'The Gadfly' came out at this time, entitled An Interrupted Friendship. And Mary Augusta Ward, commonly known as Mrs Humphry Ward, brought out another of her highly coloured full-weave tapestries, Canadian Born.

The old guard men include writers whose reputations have slipped a little, and a couple who still command an audience. SR Crockett, most famous for The Stickit Minister, published Dew of their Youth, H Rider Haggard graced us with two typical pieces Morning Star and Queen Sheba's Ring, Anthony Hope revealed Second String, and "Q", otherwise known as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, brought out Lady Good for Nothing.

Two of the newer guard whose names still strongly echo are HG Wells and Arnold Bennett. Wells' The History of Mr Polly and Bennett's Helen with the High Hand and Clayhanger (the first novel of the trilogy) were out this year.

Here is the first part of the complete list. It is gleaned from my bibliographic sources and there are more to check. I have the Annals of Australian Literature edited by Grahame Johnstone and published by Oxford University Press in 1970 whose contents for this year I have included. The main part of this list has been retrieved from The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, volumes three and four, edited respectively by George Watson and IR Willison, and published in 1969 and 1972:

ADAMS, Arthur H. Galahad Jones
ANONYMOUS (later revealed to be Viola Meynell). Martha Vine
BAILEY, HC. Storm and Treasure
BENNETT, Arnold. Clayhanger
BENNETT, Arnold. Helen with the High Hand
BOWEN, Marjorie. I Will Maintain
BRADDON, Mary E. Beyond These Voices
BROUGHTON, Rhoda. The Devil and the Deep Sea
BUCHAN, John. Prester John
CANNAN, Gilbert. Devious Ways
CORELLI, Marie. The Devil's Motor
CROCKETT, SR. Dew of their Youth
DEEPING, Warwick. The Lame Englishman
DEEPING, Warwick. The Rust of Rome
FORSTER, EM. Howards End
FOWLER, Ellen Thorneycroft. The Wisdom of Folly
GLYN, Elinor. His Hour
HAGGARD, H Rider. Morning Star
HAGGARD, H Rider. Queen Sheba's Ring
HEWLETT, Maurice. Rest Harrow
HOPE, Anthony. Second String
HUEFFER, Ford Madox. A Call
HUEFFER, Ford Madox. The Portrait
HUNT, Violet. The Wife of Altamont
KAYE-SMITH, Sheila. Spell Land
LOCKE, William J. Simon the Jester
LOWNDES, Marie Belloc. When No Man Pursueth
MASON, AEW. At the Villa Rose
MAXWELL, WB. The Rest Cure
MONTAGUE, CE. A Hind Let Loose
MORGAN, William de. An Affair of Dishonour
NORRIS, WE. Not Guilty
ONIONS, Oliver. The Exception
OXENHAM, John. Lauristons
OXENHAM, John. A Maid of the Silver Sea
PAIN, Barry. The Exiles of Faloo
PHILLPOTTS, Eden. The Thief of Virtue
PRAED, Rosa. Opal Fire
"Q". Lady Good for Nothing
REYNOLDS, Stephen. The Holy Mountain
RICHARDSON, Henry Handel. The Getting of Wisdom
RIDGE, W. Pett. Nine to Six-Thirty
SANDES, John. Love and the Aeroplane
SIDGWICK, Ethel. Promise
SINCLAIR, May. The Creators
SNAITH, JC. Fortune
SNAITH, JC. Mrs Fitz
SWINNERTON, Frank. The Young Idea
VACHELL, Horace Annesley. The Other Side
VOYNICH, EL. An Interrupted Friendship
WALLACE, Edgar. The Nine Bears
WALPOLE, Hugh. Maradick at Forty
WARD, Mrs Humphry. Canadian Born
WODEHOUSE, PG. A Gentleman of Leisure
WODEHOUSE, PG. Psmith in the City
YOUNG, EH. A Corn of Wheat

Of course, there are other names to conjure with here. Younger guns, the most obvious being John Buchan's notable Prester John, two from Ford Madox Ford (then still known as Hueffer), EM Forster and his seminal Howards End, May Sinclair's The Creators, PG Wodehouse's hilarious A Gentleman of Leisure and Psmith in the City and the debut work of the underrated EH Young, A Corn of Wheat. There's a good deal of quite exotic fiction from Maurice Hewlett (the most highly sculpted writer I can imagine from that time), JC Snaith (another exquisite stylist), Horace Annesley Vachell, William de Morgan (the notable potter and tile-maker turned rich-toned storyteller) and a young CE Montague prior to his First World War glory days in subject matter.

And in between them, some incredibly interesting corners of popular literature and also some forgotten literary territory. A treasure trove for the reader, and at long last a non-academic raison d'etre for the Print On Demand publishers - a good majority of these books are available from them. I don't care for their production standards, but I'll take them anytime over unavailability!

(My bibliographic sources cover Britain and Australia, but if anyone out there feels that a prominent Canadian or South African or other Empire novel of this year should be included, please provide the details. I still have research to do in The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction, so a subsequent instalment of this will include a supplemental list from there.)