Great Novel No. 8: “Pride And Prejudice”

Pride And Prejudice: A Novel

by Jane Austen

***

“A Novel”. They are two little words that usually have me rolling my eyes every time they appear on the cover of a modern work of fiction, and I feel not a moment’s regret in doing so. These days subtitling a work as “a novel” smacks of utter pretentiousness. It’s by far the most common form of prose fiction imaginable, neither as new or distinctive as the etymology of the word suggests. And when everyone uses that subtitle, the practice is only devalued all the more.

But this is the first time we’ve seen it in this reading list; for that, and the fact that I believe the subtitle is justified, my eyes don’t roll. In my remarks on Tom Jones I called it the first true English novel of this list in the sense that it was consciously aware of it’s own power and limitations, and worked within them to achieve the desired effect. Here, with Jane Austen’s 1813 masterpiece Pride And Prejudice, the list not only enters the nineteenth century but also finds the novel form entering a new phase of maturity.

Few authors before Jane Austen drew characters with such believable motivations, thoughts, and most importantly transformations. Though on the surface this is a story about falling in love and fairy tale marriage, Austen spends most of her time within the bounds of Elizabeth Bennet’s inner thoughts as she reacts to and judges the actions of others, then acts on those judgments. This psychological realism is where Pride And Prejudice finds its power — and earns its title. Pride is the insufferable lens through which we view ourselves. Prejudice is the unjust measure by which we judge others. The examination of both emotional mechanisms, to which degree each character has them, and to which degree they overcome them, is the story’s real concern. It is a novel about performing to strangers to protect one’s self, and about how much outward appearances create first impressions (the then-popular “picturesque” aesthetic is a recurring motif).

But all of this is what leads to me a somewhat ironic opinion, given how many times Pride And Prejudice has been dramatized: that it is, in fact, a practically unfilmable book. It isn’t that it’s plot is too complicated or that there are too many characters or that the visual effects would be prohibitively expensive. None of those things are true. Instead, what makes it unsuitable for film is that psychological realism, that exploration of Elizabeth’s thoughts and attitudes and the way in which they undergo gradual change; such things are hard to translate into a medium designed to be an outward show of appearances. Precisely when we’re meant to be realizing how much certain characters are only putting on a performance, we rely entirely on the performance of an actor. It’s no wonder then that when I first watched the BBC miniseries (before reading the book) I couldn’t understand what all the fuss for Jane Austen was for. It wasn’t until I read the book in college that I understood why she was considered a classic author — and only now, on a second reading, do I see why my opinion changed.

I wad fortunate enough to be reading an annotated edition that pointed out how much the English language has changed since Austen’s time. There are many times when the words she uses have subtly different meanings than they do for us today, thus probably changing the way we’re reading her text. “Punctually” means pointedly, not just on time (hence also the related word “punctilious”); “interesting” means significant, not just that something is of interest; and “unfolding” means discovering or revealing, as when Elizabeth unfolds Darcy’s climactic letter which reveals to her truth that she hasn’t known before.

Pride And Prejudice has long been counted as little more than chick lit by some men, and I admit I used to be among them. But on closer examination I’ve found that it’s actually a work of great complexity, working more or less within the expected patterns of romance fiction but ultimately more concerned with how people fall in love rather than how they dance around it in order to extend the plot. It earns its place as one of the Great Novels that should be on everyone’s list.

Marvellous Adventure

I was planning a big, splashy Special Announcement post with bold headlines and lots of italics. But it may be better to just go with the simpler, down-to-earth approach. Especially since this is going to be simpler and more down-to-earth than it sounds like at first. Those of you who follow this blog regularly were told that Marvellous Adventure was coming in 2012, and so it is.

It so happens to be the title of my upcoming online fiction magazine.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a thing for the 1930s. For someone who’s as interested in history as I am, the decade offers endless fascination. The popular culture of North America from the period has come to be known as the Golden Age. Radio, comic books, Hollywood…and of course the pulps. Escape cost nothing but a dime from most newsstands. I won’t pretend to be truly nostalgic for an era I’ve only read about, but I grew up with some of its descendants; Star Wars and Indiana Jones are love letters to the Saturday matinee serials their creators enjoyed in television replays. And of course The Adventures of Tintin are an actual product of the time.

Two years ago I found myself writing my own love letter to that old-time style of action and escape in the form of my own blogged and serialized novel, The Whitehawk Legion. The heroine was Emily Monroe, the young head of her family’s industrial company who fights crime on her own terms. When she discovers that her late father was a member of a worldwide secret organization dedicated to making the world a better place, she becomes embroiled in a mystery that takes her all the way to the Caribbean. The inventing and plotting of it; having actual readers and hearing their responses; and finally writing “The End” on a full-length novel. It was incredibly gratifying — but most of all it was fun. And I discovered how much I really loved, had always loved, the genre that isn’t quite action and isn’t quite drama, but a strange mix of both: Adventure.

So I decided I wanted to write more of it. And to simply write more, period. After a great deal of thought, I decided finally to produce a regular periodical that would let me build a discipline of writing short stories. Making a deadline for yourself is one thing. But giving it teeth is something else.

Marvellous Adventure will appear quarterly, beginning in March of this year, absolutely free. Each issue will have two short stories, for a total of eight stories a year. The current plan is to make them available as PDF files right here on this blog, but the details of “distribution” are still being worked on. Everything will be announced in due course.

And now comes the most exciting part of this whole business, at least for me — which means it should be for you too.

I always wanted to return to Emily Monroe and her world, and now I get to do that in the pages of Marvellous Adventure. The headline feature of each issue will be The Adventures of Emily Monroe, a series of stories that treats the original novel as something like a pilot episode or proof-of-concept. The story starts fresh, and with plenty of differences. In short there’s no need to read the original novel to enjoy these stories. And to be honest, I’d rather you didn’t anyway. It was very much a first draft!

As time goes on, and if Marvellous Adventure does become a long-term concern, there are ideas for other ongoing series bubbling away in my brain. But for now it will be just The Adventures of Emily Monroe and a separate standalone story each issue. Look for the first instalment on March 31.

Spread the word! Tell your friends! Warn your enemies! The more people reading the merrier. Watch for updates and news, and probably even an official Facebook page. And remember the motto: Adventure With A Capital A!

Stay Tuned…

I have a few things coming down the blog pipeline in the next little while (that collection of thoughts on the Harry Potter movies for one thing; a Great Novels review of Pride And Prejudice for another).

But on Monday, January 16, you’ll want to make this site your first cyberspace stop of the morning. Well, you’ll probably go to Facebook first, but you will regret it. I’m preparing an announcement that’ll wake you up faster than a cup of coffee (and foul stuff that is, too).

Like it says at the top: stay tuned…

Great Novel No. 7: “The Castle of Otranto”

The Castle of Otranto, A Gothic Story

by Horace Walpole

***

We have Horace Walpole to thank for the modern horror story. He was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous statesman who is thought of as the first Prime Minister of Britain, and a politician himself. Being financially independent meant he could indulge his taste for the Gothic aesthetic in a private estate known as Strawberry Hill.

What is Gothic? In Walpole’s lifetime, there was a growing interest in the art, architecture, and literature of the Middle Ages, known as the Gothic period. The interest developed into a new aesthetic that would find its full flowering with Byron and the Romantics in the nineteenth century and last well into the Victorian era. We call this the Gothic Revival, and elements of this aesthetic movement will come up again and again throughout the Great Novels list.

But that was mostly in the future for Walpole. During the eighteenth century the predominant mainstream view of fiction was that it was meant to educate readers about the “correct” way of life and moral values, which really just meant the standard social conventions of the period. But Walpole and other writers like him wanted to give their imaginations a freer rein. The first Preface to The Castle of Otranto (his only novel) presents it as simply a pseudonymous translation of a medieval manuscript. After critical and commercial success, the second edition came with the subtitle “A Gothic Story” and a new Preface where Walpole came out of the closet, acknowledged his debts to past writers, and outlined how he hoped his novel would pave the way for an innovative literary future.

Walpole’s innovation lies mainly in the way he proposed to combine supernaturalism with realism. Whether he achieved this or not is debatable, but what he wanted was to portray characters who behaved as real people would do under extraordinary situations. Perhaps the criticisms of unrealistic characters that is often made against Otranto is this nature of the story, which finds characters responding to a plot which is forced on them from outside rather than being generated by their own actions. It’s a subjective determination whether Walpole succeeds or not, a matter of personal taste decided by the reader.

But the effort to combine real with unreal results in something more than just the Gothic aesthetic. It makes Otranto one of the first works of true fantasy in the modern era. In fact the real story of the novel is not just about a string of supernatural phenomena, but about the consequences of a past crime that stole the inheritance of property from its rightful possessors. Class distinction, the passivity of women, and other social conventions all eventually come into play. I often maintain that a good fantasy will be about something other than the fantastic elements. Fantasy literature can have a strong relationship to our real lives, and horror literature’s true power can lie in its exploration of what frightens us most.

Given the variety of discussion topics it generates, I still didn’t find myself liking The Castle of Otranto very much. Some of the complaints I can make against it are similar to ones I would make against a lot of modern horror fiction (but certainly not all of it), namely the reliance on shock and surprise to create terror rather than the slow buildup of suspense. The story often shifts abruptly from one Gothic image to the next: a man crushed by a giant helmet falling from the heavens, a woman fleeing down a dark tunnel, an armoured hand on the bannister at the top of a staircase. These kinds of setpieces became almost standard in Gothic literature, but they create a superficiality that give importance to things instead of people or plot or dialogue. And Walpole, while not a terrible writer, isn’t necessarily a good one. “Serviceable” might be the backhanded compliment to employ here about his prose.

It’s a bit funny that the novel which is seen as the progenitor of the modern horror story, and which has had so much influence on English and American literature, should have at its core the issue of inheritance rights. Walpole’s literary descendants are many and he has bequeathed to them his legacy of sometimes being derided and sometimes being praised by the mainstream; these days it’s usually the elite who dole out criticism and the masses who gush the praise.

The Castle of Otranto remains an iconic work in the history of literature, no matter what I think its problems are, and it challenged the ordinary conventions in a way that is hard not to admire. Walpole said in a letter, “It remained for the enlightened eighteenth century to baffle language and invent horrors that can be found in no vocabulary.” He was speaking of the execution of Louis XVI in France. He could easily have been speaking of the Gothic.

Holmes For The Holidays

My entertainment this holiday season was more or less split into two parts. It was a time to sit down with two of my favourite British cultural icons, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter. Let me review the first here; I’ll get to Harry later.

***

Sherlock

First up, I treated myself to the Series 1 Blu-ray of Sherlock, the recent BBC series created by Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat and fellow Who writer Mark Gatiss. The buzz was intense because of the names involved and fortunately it more than lives up to the hype. Taking perhaps more risks than most other adaptations, the series transposes the characters to modern-day London…but the riskier the road, the greater the reward, or so some say. Plenty of people are enjoying Sherlock and I’m one of them. In a lot of ways it’s more faithful to the Conan Doyle stories than some actual period pieces. Not the least of these ways is the fact that Watson remains to a large degree our main point of view character; we see the stories through his eyes more often than not, and he allows us to find the human connection next to a rather unpredictable and seemingly psychotic detective. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman plays John Watson. They can add their names with pride to the long list of those who have portrayed the pair onscreen — and more than that they can elevate them to the level of those who have been the best. January sees the premiere of a further three 90-minute episodes to make Series 2. Don’t miss out.

The Rediscovered Railyway Mysteries, and Other Stories by John Taylor (Read by Benedict Cumberbatch)

A search for some Sherlock Holmes audiobooks turned up this interesting set. John Taylor apparently wrote some Holmesian radio plays for the BBC and has recently returned with some audio-only short stories…read by none other than Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the above-mentioned Sherlock. I obviously couldn’t resist checking them out and found them quite satisfying. Curiously the opening story, “An Inscrutable Masquerade”, has almost nothing to do with the ostensible theme of trains but takes place entirely in the Baker Street apartments. “The Conundrum of Coach 13″ involves gold bullion, a locked railway carriage, and Cumberbatch’s rather admirable American accent. “The Trinity Vicarge Larceny” again loses the overall train of thought, but features a very strange set of clues that give off a strong atmosphere of Conan Doyle at his best. The last story, “The 10.59 Assassin”, is probably the best of the four and the murderer is the one you least expect. While none of the stories would be mistaken for a lost adventure the way they and other pastiches claim, they are fun if you’re a fan and nitpickers will find little to complain about. It’s also fun to hear the voice of a current Sherlock Holmes pretending to be Watson, and Benedict Cumberbatch (I will never get tired of typing or saying that name) does a very good job of making you forget that fact.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

A few people seem to have given into Holmes mania this past month, and this movie is probably the reason why. 2009′s Sherlock Holmes gets a sequel that is at least as good as the original, though not necessarily better. I admit this version of Holmes and Watson is not my favourite, but I was probably a bit harsh in my initial review, which was written before a couple more viewings convinced me of what it really was: a fun action adventure that happened to have Sherlock Holmes in it. The plot may be a bit convoluted, but it breaks out in a run and slows down for breath at the appropriate moments, making sure we’re never utterly bored and never utterly lost. Professor Moriarty, a shadowy presence (get it?) in the first film, steps out into the light and reveals himself as Jared Harris who I knew from his guest role on the TV show Fringe. He doesn’t disappoint but gives a grand and show-stealing performance as the infamous Napoleon of Crime. Which is saying something given how many writers can’t resist casting him as the main villain, making it easy for it to fall into hoary cliche. Not this time. And it all builds to a wonderfully suspenseful sequence that is this adaptation’s version of the Reichenbach Falls episode — which manages to elicit a surprised gasp from even this lifelong Holmesian.

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

The press releases proclaim this as the first “officially” authorized Sherlock Holmes story since the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but ignoring the fudged reality that the stories have been in the public domain for quite some time I was still looking forward to this novel. While I can’t say I’ve read many pastiches, I think I’ve read enough to distinguish a good one from a bad one. Pastiches can never hope to quite match the original, but that doesn’t stop authors from trying. And this is perhaps the most successful I’ve ever read. True, it begins with a rather cliched promise that what we are about to read is an account sealed up by Watson because the world was not yet prepared for such a scandal, but when we remember the Victorian Era’s culture it becomes not only easier to accept, but in fact very easy. This also allows there to be a more modern taste of subject matter (the final solution is certainly something Conan Doyle would never publish) without violating the period setting. But the true triumph of the novel is the way Horowitz captures Watson’s voice almost perfectly, and this lends it a background air of sadness which sometimes comes to the foreground. While the plot may be set in the earlier days of the partnership (or at least before Reichenbach) Watson tells us that he is writing the account in his final days — and the sadness comes not just from the passage that muses on Sherlock Holmes’ death after retirement, but that this will be the last time his faithful chronicler puts pen to paper.

***

All of these recent adaptations come highly recommended, whether you’ve followed Holmes and Watson’s adventures for ages or if you’re just a casual mystery fan. I enjoyed myself so much that I’m going to be returning to the original stories for a thorough re-read, hopefully later this year. If you get to 221B Baker Street before me, tell the boys I said hello and that I’m on my way.

The Best of 2011

It’s that time of year again — namely, the end — and that means it’s time to reflect on the best books and movies from the last twelve months. So without further ado, I present my list of personal favourites of all the books I read and all the movies I watched for the first time this year. Quite a few I’m sure I’ll be returning to.

Best Reads

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

True Grit by Charles Portis

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (read my review)

The Making of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ by J.W. Rinzler

The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin (read my review)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Berlin At War by Roger Moorehouse (read my review)

Bone by Jeff Smith

The David Story by Robert Alter (read my review)

God’s Secretaries: The Making of The King James Bible by Adam Nicholson

Soldier of The Mist by Gene Wolfe

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

***

Best Films

The Social Network, dir. David Fincher

The King’s Speech, dir. Tom Hooper

True Grit (2010), dir. The Coen Brothers

The Book of Eli, dir. The Hughes Brothers

Source Code, dir. Duncan Jones

One Week, dir. Michael McGowan

X-Men: First Class, dir. Matthew Vaughn

Super 8, dir. J.J. Abrams (read my review)

Inglourious Basterds, dir. Quentin Tarantino

The Reader, dir. Stephen Daldry

Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2, dir. Quentin Tarantino

Hamlet (VIFF), dir. Bruce Ramsey

The Adventures of Tintin, dir. Steven Spielberg (read my review)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, dir. Guy Ritchie

The Help, dir. Tate Taylor

***

I just wanted to point out to everyone that the 100 Great Novels list has been revised again. I was never fully happy with my selection before, and realized there were a few too many on the list that I thought I should read instead of actually wanting to. There is now a greater variety to the list, mostly because I decided that each author should have only one book (the sole exception is Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, which are almost always published as a single volume and so I counted them as one). There is also quite a bit more science fiction and fantasy, as well as several more children’s books. I’m quite happy with it now, and should have more fun with the whole thing.

And finally, let me say it’s been a pleasure to be blogging this year. I think I got some good ones out, and it was encouraging to see my readership grow a little. I think I’m getting better at bombarding people with links. There’s still some great things to come, and I’m excited for them. I’ve started another blog where I’ll be reading the Bible all next year. And of course…a certain special project is still on the horizon. Get ready for more details on that very soon.

That’s all for 2011, folks. See you next year!

Halfway Out of The Dark

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone,

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter long ago.

***

Historical accuracy can be a wonderful thing, but there are moments when we make ourselves slaves to it. No, the Magi didn’t visit Christ the same night He was born. And no, we can’t be certain that He was born in the dead of night. And it couldn’t have happened in winter, since the shepherds were out in the fields instead of huddled inside their own stable.

But that’s not really the point of our Christmas carols. The point is to show, in poetry, the full meaning of the Incarnation. Jesus was born precisely when hope was almost non-existent. The promises made to Israel of a Messiah were in the distant past, and God had not sent a true prophet in four centuries. Rome had occupied Judea and false saviours made vain attempts at revolution. For some of the Jews, it must have seemed as if God had abandoned them to the chaos of the world’s sin. That was the moment in history when God chose to come to Earth.

Ever since the Fall, no human being has been truly free. Like a day that dawns cloudy, His face has been hidden from most of us. We are separated from Him by a wall made of the consequences of our own choices. Even now after the first coming of the Saviour, the world is cold and dark and lost in a bleak midwinter.

But the good news is that the world is not doomed. And there are moments when the veil between Heaven and Earth is thin, when we can see and hear God as a piercing light in the darkness. The first Christmas was just such a time. It marks that point when God began His work of restoring the world that broke with the Fall away from Heaven. The Crucifixion and Resurrection may be the crux on which everything turns, but they cannot happen without the Incarnation. Christmas has no meaning without Easter. Easter is impossible without Christmas. It isn’t the achievement of salvation, but the light is beginning to dawn. We are halfway out of the dark.

May God bless you and give you the peace that is not dependent on your circumstances, but only on His grace.

Merry Christmas.

I Believe I’ve Captured Something of Your Likeness: “The Adventures of Tintin”

A young man sits for his portrait by a street cartoonist. The artist notes that his subject looks familiar and asks if he’s drawn him before. Finally, he finishes his work and hands the drawing over. “I believe I’ve captured something of your likeness,” he says proudly. And indeed he has, with the perfectly oval head, tiny nose, and dotted eyes — exactly as that artist, Hergé himself, drew him for fifty years. It’s a fitting tribute, even if you can see it coming, and it’s a nice moment for those like me who have followed that young man for a healthy portion of our lives. He is, of course, the trench-coated and tuft-haired boy reporter Tintin.

When I heard that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were teaming up to make a movie based on the Tintin comics, I was both nervous and excited. These are two Hollywood demigods we’re talking about, but for me Tintin has been equally sacred. In this age of reinvented heroes, he was getting his one chance at bat. It would take a special touch to do this properly. Fortunately, my fears were all in my head. They have captured something of Tintin’s likeness.

The same magic that was in those comics is undoubtedly in this film. Adventure is still the key word in this story, not action; there are fights and chases galore, but they achieve the desired adrenaline rush from fluidity and suspense rather than quick cutting and confusing angles. Not just humour, but the same sense of humour as Hergé’s comics is present throughout, with a mix of slapstick and wordplay that is charming and genuinely funny. Cartoon physics are on display in virtually every scene, which keeps things light and magical. And most importantly, though the plot is both a mashup of a couple different adventures (primarily The Secret of The Unicorn) and drastically different from either of them, the characters have not been altered in the least. Tintin is still the boy reporter, a title that no other fictional character in the world can lay claim to. He still has the heart of gold and the qualities of an everyman. Captain Haddock steals the show with his quick temper and quicker taste for whiskey. The Thom(p)son twins are the Chaplinesque but dependable comic relief they always were. It’s a joy to see them come to life so fully.

There has been a fair share of “Hollywoodization” to the universe, however, none of which is all that unpleasant. The action scenes especially are plussed beyond even the wildest dreams of James Bond. The major setpiece is a car chase through the streets of fictional Bagghar that never even cuts to a different shot, but swings around as if on some impossible crane and holds its momentum as the audience holds its breath. A bit of the self-analysis that characters in modern films tend to do also creeps in (they say things like “I am like this and you are different in this way and that’s why we work so well together”, as a broad example). But none of it hurts or feels like an injustice against the tone of the original comics.

One of the things that made me nervous about the movie was motion capture CGI. I admit I was slightly prejudiced, since I’ve never seen one these pseudo-animated movies. At first I thought the technology was mainly a shortcut way for live-action directors to make animated movies without having any experience as animators, which feels like cheating to me. But while I still think there’s room for that opinion, the more I think about it the more I think it resembles the time-honoured art form of puppetry. In all the different forms of puppetry, performers manipulate a character through their movements while never appearing onstage themselves. Motion capture is like so many things of the digital age: a high-tech version of something that’s been around for centuries. Some have suggested that it could be used to make entirely human characters that are indistinguishable from filmed actors. Personally, nothing could be more distasteful to me in a movie, but for those projects where a certain stylization is required like The Adventures of Tintin, it seems to be an interesting technique.

And the way they have translated the faces of the original characters is outstanding. Tintin’s face is still honest and open and shows his earnest love of adventure. Captain Haddock’s has the necessary careworn weariness of a seadog combined with a kind of childlike quality. Perhaps the only stumbling block the movie makes in this regard is the Thompsons. I felt their expressions in the movie were a little too dumbfounded compared to the way Hergé drew them. It’s their nature to be dumbfounded of course, but their faces always had a confidence that told you they were completely unaware of their own haplessness. But it’s a relatively minor quibble in a film full of positives.

Over the many years that I’ve read Tintin, one sequence has always been a highlight: the flashback scene in The Secret of The Unicorn where Captain Haddock recounts the story of his ancestor’s battle with the pirate Red Rackham. There have been many times when I’ve gone back to just read those few pages again. The excitement just flows from panel to panel and displays the real power of comics. To my surprise, the movie matches that power almost completely. Using the language of cinematic movement and the unique style that animation affords, the excitement still flows gracefully and more than a couple of transitions are simply stunning. And imagine my delight when my favourite dialogue exchange between Tintin and Haddock involving a bottle of rum was kept word for word. I could have jumped and down with glee if it wouldn’t have been so embarrassing in a public place.

Surely you don’t need me to say anything more about this movie? I’ve gushed over it enough for a lifetime. If you have no idea who Tintin is or what this movie is about, there are worse introductions to these fantastic stories. If your copies of the books are falling apart like some of mine are, you have your wish come true: a chance to meet once more your old friends and follow them on a brand new, faithful adventure.

“How’s your thirst for adventure, Captain?” says the boy reporter with a smile to his new friend. The reply comes with a look towards the horizon.

“Unquenchable, Tintin…”

Great Novel No. 6: “Tom Jones”

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

by Henry Fielding

***

I haven’t written one of these reviews in quite some time. Let me see if I still remember how.

First, one interesting detail. This is the first book from my list that actually uses the word novel. Most of the time, Fielding satirically calls this work a “history”, but for a moment he makes use of a term that seems to have been then just coming into common usage. I can’t say it was the first time it appeared in print in English ever, but for the purposes of this list it comes close enough for me.

Together with this, there is also the effect of the narrator. Though it isn’t Tom Jones himself, with the many asides and prefatory chapters to each book (eighteen in all), it is hard to say the novel is written in the third person. Fielding gives us a nearly constant running commentary at every point of his story, from moral and ethical analyses of different characters’ points of view to the announcements that he will end his current chapter and begin another. The prefatory chapters are really short essays on literature, dramaturgy, and criticism in general. Fielding examines and explains the role of his own story on his readers even as he tells it. What we have here is a narrative voice that is so transparently a narrative voice that some critics have gone so far as to call him the main protagonist of the story.

But I think if I were to have any say in the matter (and with my relative inexperience with literature from the period I doubt I can claim any say at all), I would cast my vote for Tom Jones as the first true English novel. That is to say, it is the earliest I have read that is not only aware of its own power and limits as a narrative format distinct from those which preceded it, but also uses that power to great effect.

On the whole, I enjoyed the book a great deal. Fielding is not quite so harsh a satirist as Swift was, but he is possibly more charming and his wit keeps the writing fresh over such a large vista. The plot is at its core a simple enough love story with attendant complications, but Fielding takes the action on the road and the story becomes almost a straight travelogue for a large part of the middle. A modern editor might insist on removing some of the more “meandering” passages, but despite the picaresque nature of the narrative there is nothing really wasteful. Jones meets characters again later, sometimes much later, and situations that seem random at the time can come to have a profound effect on future developments. It may have taken me two months to finish, but I was never bored or considered abandoning it for a moment.

Much more could be said about Tom Jones and its place in the history of the novel, or Fielding’s narration, or any one of a dozen topics that it presents itself to, but I think I will take the example of the author and declare before your eyes the end to this post.

Still Coming In 2012

My computer may be having problems, but I haven’t given up hope that this project will still come to fruition. Delayed? It’s possible. But one way or another, Marvellous Adventure is coming.

Stay tuned…