Month: March 2019

Review: Gilead

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I bought a copy of Gilead because it won the Pulitzer Prize of Fiction, and it appeared on a list of best twenty-first century novels.  It is written by Marilynne Robinson, who was born in 1943 and grew up in Sandoint, Idaho.  She graduated from Pembroke College magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, receiving her doctorate in English from University of Washington.  Ms Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1991, retiring in 2016.  Apart from Gilead, she has written three highly acclaimed novels and numerous essays and works of non-fiction.  Her novels are noted for their thematic depiction of both rural life and faith.

Marilynne Robinson

The novel begins in 1956 in Gilead, an unincorporated community in Adair County, Iowa, about 100 km southwest of Des Moines.  The Reverend John Ames, toward the end of his life, is beginning a letter to his young son which constitutes the book.  Ames is at least a third generation Congregational minister, and his father and grandfather were ordained ministers in Iowa and Kansas..  His first wife and daughter died, and he married a younger woman who visited his church about ten years ago.  The story includes anecdotes about his father, his childhood, his brother, Edward – a very bright atheist, and the search for the grave of his grandfather.  A particular focus is on the Broughton family; the father is a Presbyterian minister, also in his seventies; the son, Jack, is an enigmatic figure, who has a special relationship with Ames, dating back to his childhood, but Ames and Jack have difficulty confronting each other about Jacks sins and his agnosticism.  The language is gentle and pious; the setting is, as Edward says, ‘a backwater’.  Any significant actions have largely taken place somewhere else or in the past.  Nonetheless, this is a novel that captures the reader’s attention through the intellectual honest and simplicity of the Reverend Ames.

This isn’t a book about religion or faith per se, though there are references to one or the other on nearly every page.  Rather, it is a novel about the challenges of living a caring, devout, unadorned life, while the external world goes through its thoughtless, irresponsible gyrations.  The title of the novel raises the question of Jeremiah: “Is there no balm in Gilead?”  The answer has been the subject of religious debate for centuries.  There was a balm made from a tree in the region of Gilead (in Jordan), but how effective was it?  Gilead was a place famous for its iniquitous people.  There is also a traditional spiritual praising the balm of Gilead in spiritual terms.  Perhaps Ms Robinson’s intention was to stimulate her readers to consider the merits of Reverend Ames’ lifestyle.

The only reservation I had about this book is whether there should have been more engagement with members of the congregation to add dimensions to the question about the balm of Gilead, and less of the thoughts and musings of Reverend Ames, who, after all, is a clearly defined character from early in the novel.

We Need to Talk About Children’s Books in a Grown Up Way

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There was an article in the Evening Standard on 28 January with the above title written by Katie Law, an ES journalist, covering the views of Lauren Child, the best-selling author-illustrator and current Children’s Laureate, on the problems faced by children’s books.

Lauren Child

Law says: “Lauren Child thinks children’s book publishing still gets a bad deal. It’s one of the reasons she is so happy to be a judge for this year’s Oscar’s Book Prize ‘There’s still a lot of snootiness about children’s books. Just look at the teeny-weeny percentage that get reviewed compared to adults. It’s as if there’s a kind of hierarchy.’

“Child is best known for her books featuring Clarice Bean, Charlie and Lola (who became a TV series), Ruby Redfort and Hubert Horatio, which together have sold more than five million copies worldwide. In the two decades since we first met quirky, snub-nosed Clarice Bean and her chaotic, trendy family, her legions of original fans have become adults. ‘The most touching experience in my whole career is talking to grown-ups who tell me what the book meant to them when they were growing up,’ says Child, 53. ‘It’s why I’m so passionate about the idea that children’s book writing and illustrating should get more recognition, and why prizes like Oscar’s Book Prize are so important, because there is so little coverage. We know that a child’s life can be changed by what they read, so why don’t we spend more time thinking about what that material is?’

“Pippi Longstocking, Mary Poppins and The Secret Garden — all of which she has illustrated — were the books that had the most profound effect on Child when she was growing up. ‘The Secret Garden was a gamechanger because it was about someone who was so hard to like. She was plain, had a horrible expression on her face, was bossy and ungrateful. As a child I felt like her, I felt all of those things. I felt it was me. So for children who might think bad things about themselves, these stories can help let them off the hook. It’s all a drip-drip effect, which is why it’s important we talk about children’s books in a grown-up way, in terms of what they’re about, rather than just saying ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

Clarice Bean

“Ms Child says: ‘We’re great at giving prizes for unusual adults’ books but not so good at praising people who have different ideas about children’s books; things need to be a bit more extraordinary.’ Her own trajectory is a great example: Clarice Bean only took off when she stopped trying to please her publishers. ‘I was young and kept trying to do what they wanted and getting it wrong, so every time I rewrote or redrew something, it would get more dead. It had none of me in it, so quite rightly they rejected it. I actually started writing Clarice Bean as a film and forgot about all the things you need to make a book, and that’s when the publishers suddenly became interested. It’s about the need to reject everything you think they want and find your own voice.’

“The National Literacy Trust finds that one in 11 children and young people in the UK don’t own a book (a figure that rises to one in eight children on free school meals), and that book ownership is one of the highest predictors of reading attainment and mental well-being.

“Child grew up in Wiltshire in a happy family not unlike Clarice Bean’s. Today she lives in north London with her partner, criminal barrister Adrian Darbishire, and their daughter Tuesday, now nearly nine, whom she adopted from Mongolia at the age of two-and-a-half after visiting the country as part of a Unesco project.  ‘Having Tuesday doesn’t change the way I write or illustrate but it does make me see more than ever how important illustration is. We had no common language when she arrived. But we did have drawing, and she was a natural right from the start, which really helped us communicate. It’s important for children that their drawings are looked at and that it has a wide role in education because it’s about learning to observe and understand, just like creative writing, and having these skills can make you much more empathetic.'”

I particularly agree with what Ms Child says about book publishers: they don’t know what they want, but when they find something eclectic that is well-written and full of the author’s passion, they go for it.

 

An Unwelcome Prize?

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Last week’s Saturday Telegraph  had and article by Tristram Fane Saunders with the title, ‘Does Anybody Want To Be the Poet Laureate?’

In my early years at university, I used to write reams of ‘classic’, romantic poetry in iambic pentameter, and I would have been enchanted with the thought of being Poet Laureate of anywhere – even Atlantic City – if it had been offered to me.  But, had I read Mr Saunders’ article at the time, I might have had second thoughts.   As far as I can tell, Mr Saunders is a poet, a comic, writer,  translator, commentator for the Telegraph, and all around culture vulture.

Tristram Fane Saunders

He says, “Who would want to be poet laureate? John Skelton, Henry VIII’s tutor and self-proclaimed “Lauryate”, had to put up with rivals “rudely revilyng me in the kynges noble hall”, and royal poets have faced mud-slinging ever since – especially from other poets.

“Dryden, the first modern laureate, called his successor, Shadwell, “a foul mass of corrupted matter”. George III’s poet Pye was guilty of churning out verse “doggedly and dully” according to Southey, who found he suffered from the same problem on inheriting the post.

“In 1999, the appointment of Andrew Motion was denounced as “a shameful failure of integrity and imagination” by Carol Ann Duffy. She had nothing against Motion, but felt the job should have gone to a woman. (Of course, a decade later, for the first time in history, it did.)

“As Duffy’s 10-year tenure comes to an end this year, it’s time for the country to choose its new bardic mascot. But who makes that choice? Until now it has been shrouded in obfuscation, but this time the Government has laid the whole process bare. A “steering group” of 15 named experts has been assembled from the heads of various literary festivals, libraries and poetry organisations around the UK. The group has drawn up a shortlist of four or five poets, culled from a longer list after a bit of back-and-forth with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

“It is now up to the DCMS to make the final selection – or selections, if the first choice turns the post down, as Philip Larkin did in 1984. As a formality, the decision is passed on to the Prime Minister, who then submits it to the Queen for approval. In practice, however, the buck stops with the head of the DCMS, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright.

“I don’t envy the steering group’s job. After all, how can you choose a laureate, when it’s still not altogether clear what a laureate is?

“In theory, being laureate entails no more work than being an OBE. The title is defined online by the royal household as “an honour awarded by HM to a poet whose work is of national significance”. Wordsworth only took the role after being assured by the Prime Minister that “you shall have nothing required of you”. The public may expect topical poems on state occasions, but the Queen doesn’t. Quit writing and move to Majorca, and you’ll still be eligible for your annual salary.

“That salary, as it happens, is £6,000, paid for by DCMS, and a “butt of sack” (cask of sherry) gifted by a vineyard in Spain. The booze was originally a gift received by Ben Jonson, unofficial laureate to James I and Charles I, then revived as part of Dryden’s honorarium. Duffy, Motion and Hughes all received their butt – measured into 720 bottles – from the same producers in Jerez.

“For the past 10 years Duffy has not been sitting on her butt, but giving it away at launches and selling it for charitable causes.

“The lack of hubbub around this year’s appointment is a far cry from the heady days of 1999, when the race was beset by one scandal after another. Rumours that Tony Blair wanted to “modernise” the position and reinvent it as a “People’s Laureate” (though denied by Downing Street) prompted an aghast letter from Hughes’s widow, leaked to the Telegraph, which accused Blair of jeopardising “the sanctity” of the post.

“Then a shortlist of five names was leaked, of which two had already ruled themselves out in verse: Seamus Heaney (“My passport’s green./ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast The Queen”) and Tony Harrison, who published a long poem attacking Blair, the monarchy and “toadies like Di-deifying Motion”.

“Derek Walcott, also on the list, was seen as a long shot by reporters at the time, due to doubts over whether he would be willing to move to the UK, and the lingering bad publicity of a 1996 sexual harassment allegation (though the claim was dropped). Of the five, that left only Motion and Duffy. Then came another leak: a Government “source” told the press Blair had quashed Duffy’s chances. The PM, it was claimed, was reportedly “worried about having a homosexual as poet laureate because of how it might play in Middle England”.

(In) “Bloomsbury, one bookseller is running an under-the-table sweepstake. I’m told three names have attracted significant bets from the literati there: Dalit Nagra, Alice Oswald and Lemn Sissay.  I’d add two more to that list: Jackie Kay, already Scotland’s laureate, and Simon Armitage, who’s been tipped as a laureate-in-waiting for at least 20 years.

“As for the laureateship, whoever gets it must have a thick skin. Take a leaf from Betjeman’s book. “Your appointment has been stigmatised as arbitrary and irrelevant,” Martin Amis once told the then poet laureate in a radio interview. “Do you, Sir John, feel yourself to be arbitrary and irrelevant?” Betjeman didn’t hesitate: “Yes, thank God.””