Gates of Languor

The more historical fiction I read, the more I come to admire those who write it well. It is one of those disciplines, like tightrope-walking, where what appears effortless to the expert reveals its true perils only in the work of the less proficient. Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, a historical novel acclaimed by many good judges, certainly displays all its labours on the page.

There is much to admire in this stirring story of the three hundred Spartans who defied the Persian hordes in their doomed defence of Thermopylae. Pressfield is at his best in the battle scenes, where the horrors of warfare at close quarters are all too graphically realised, and the heroism of the Spartan warriors rings down to us through the ages. But for all that, I finished the book with a lingering dissatisfaction. The feeling of immersion I get from a really good historical novel was not there. So why didn't it work for me?

The book failed for me on two separate levels, the philosophical and the technical. Historical novels seem to me to operate in one of two ways: they can either embed the reader in the period addressed, or they can use that period as a means of commenting on the present. (I oversimplify for the sake of argument). As a matter of taste I prefer the former - the novels of Patrick O'Brian, say, or Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem which I reviewed recently. If I want to think deeply on contemporary events, I'd rather read a novel which explicitly addresses those themes. If I'm reading history, don't pull me out of the period.

Gates of Fire, is very much in the second category. It reminded me more of Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick's 1986 Vietnam film--particularly the early bootcamp scenes where the recruits are systematically brutalised to prepare them for combat--than any other novel about classical antiquity. The elegiac tone of much of the book(one of its best features) is for a way of life--but it's not, except indirectly, for the Spartans. What Gates of Fire is truly lamenting is the decline of a certain aspect of America's perception of itself (a reading admittedly conditioned by post 9/11 events, but nonetheless perceptible before that). Pressfield thanks in his acknowledgements the historian and commentator Victor Davis Hanson, and it is precisely Hanson's brand of libertarian self-reliance which Pressfield so admires in American culture. I'm indebted to Paul Rhoads for quoting Hanson's recent observations on the American officer class on his blog: relics of an American past who believe in honor, duty, country, God, sacrifice, and the continuation of the American experiment. America, of course, is a country which deliberately modelled its governance on Greek and Roman models, and by taking us back to Thermopylae Pressfield is returning to the root of the 'American experiment'. I don't have any quarrel with the position articulated by Pressfield (or if I do, it's not to the point in a literary review) but I do have rather more difficulty with it being smuggled in under the guise of historical fiction.

On an artistic level, the hazard of Pressfield's philosophical approach is that it requires him to present the lives of the Spartans as a hagiography. All the main characters have been forged in the Spartan school of adversity, and though they feel understandable fear, keep it largely to themselves, a price they pay for the peerless esprit de corps of their brethren. Dienekes, the novel's moral exemplar, at times outlines his thoughts on the nature of fear for his disciples '(and of course the reader's) benefit. But because the Spartans all think alike, and all unhesitatingly follow the Code, all the conflict in the novel is external.

My other dissatisfactions with the book are around the prose itself. Pressfield has done an immense amount of research--and boy, is he going to make sure the reader knows it. He can't bring out a chamber pot without telling us the Greek for it; or he drags in an indifferent pun which only works if you know that the Greek words for "friend" and "foreskin" differ by only one letter. The truly great novelists who treat the classical period--Mary Renault or Allan Massie--don't let on to the reader that they've done any research: they just tell you the story. The result of Pressfield's scholarship is not to underwrite the narrative, it's to delay the flow of the story. Pressfield's voice is wildly variable; at one moment he will give us the argot of the common soldier (Full Metal Jacket time) while at others we are given prose of Homeric portentousness. Some writers can get away with this, but the narrative framework Pressfield has given himself, a retrospective first-person account by one of the grunts, makes the job almost impossible. The modern American idiom of the soldier-talk grates, while the high falutin' stuff doesn't sit well with the purported narrator.

I very much wanted to like Gates of Fire, if only to impress my swanky Macmillan New Writing pals; but although the book had many virtues, they were not enough to lift it above the mediocre, for this reader at least. But at least it's reminded me just how surpassingly good Mary Renault is...

The Trouble with Fanny

::Acquired Taste doesn't spend all its time reading genre fiction. Sometimes we turn our attention to The Canon as well, and over the past couple of weeks I've been re-reading Mansfield Park. I read Austen primarily for her voice: cool precision occasionally counterpointed by a thrust so deft the reader doesn't see it coming, or realise at first how deeply it has struck home. This is a pleasure which never cloys.

I've read and loved all the Austen novels many times; Mansfield Park is not my favourite (Pride and Prejudice most perfectly unites all Austen's virtues) but it is by some distance the most interesting of the six. That's because the book just shouldn't work. The heroine, Fanny Price, is timid and introverted to the point of psychosis; her amour, Edmund, is priggish and humourless. And having strung us along for 600 pages, Austen doesn't even show us their final understanding. Instead the last chapter is told--told, not shown--at such an astonishing height of authorial omniscience as to make the gods themselves seem fallible bunglers.

And yet, for most readers, including this one, it works. Maybe only just, but Austen manages to pull off a novel in which the two leading characters are not immediately sympathetic and the ending is chucked in almost as an aside.

There is no disguising that Fanny is a trial to the reader, especially the modern sensibility which expects its heroines to be feisty and spirited. Fanny is neither, although she has an inner strength which makes her interesting to the attentive reader (and indeed this process of being persuaded of her merits against our wills is exactly the one experienced by her suitor Henry Crawford). Both she and Edmund have highly developed moral sensibilities (a kinder obverse of "priggishness") and Edmund, particularly, has to fight the temptation to compromise. The modern reader may struggle to see why Edmund prizes being a country clergyman above the charms of the witty, lively and beautiful Mary, but in a 19th century context it's more easily understandable. Because Austen isn't writing a historical novel, she can assume a shared culture with her readers which simply isn't the case today: a modern writer telling the same story would need to dramatise the appeal of the church to the morally-minded, rather than taking it as read.

Even those who find Fanny and Edmund rather dull--indeed, especially those--will warm to the liveliness of Mary and Henry, all the more stimulating because they are not moral exemplars. Mary is catty and unguarded; Henry enjoys nothing more than breaking young ladies' hearts. The depth and richness of the supporting cast--not just the Crawfords, but the hateful Aunt Norris, even the indolent Lady Bertram--go some way towards offsetting the reader's frustration with Fanny's perpetual snivelling.

It would be hard for a writer to get away with the final chapter today. At long last everything has come to a head, and the reader hunkers down for a final scene like the one between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, where errors are confessed and feelings declared. Instead Austen plays a point-of-view tour-de-force of the sort our resident POV expert David Isaak could only marvel at:

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.

The rest of the novel is played out in this astoundingly distant third-person. We aren't going to get Edmund declaring his feelings for Fanny after all. What we get is a wonderfully wry paragraph that is almost post-modern in the way it steps outside the novel to remind us of the conventions of the genre:

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have that than listen to Fanny grizzle her way through Edmund's proposal (the reader will realise by now that Fanny will not face the moment with sangfroid). Austen's voice is the dominant element of the novel, and at the end she turns the camera on herself, to tell the reader what happened to everybody, and what to think about it. A writer needs to have the most compelling voice, not to mention considerable chutzpah, to pull this off. Could you do it today? Maybe you could make it work, but only if you could get it through your agent and editor.

Mansfield Park is a difficult novel. More than any of Austen's other works, it reflects a cultural sensibility now long vanished, and the reader has to work uncommonly hard to mesh their own preconceptions with the author's world. Luckily we are in the hands of a master guide, who may be moral but is never moralistic. Her wry humour remains, even at a distance of two hundred years. Settle back and enjoy the ride.

Comparison with a bestseller

I'll blog at more length on my experience with Gates of Fire once I've finished it (although for now I can only hint darkly that my pleasure is not as unalloyed as I'd hoped...). For now I'll pause only to observe the similarity between the cover and the paperback of The Dog of the North.


It's an interesting illustration of how Macmillan are trying to pitch my book - that while it's fantasy, they are trying also to convey an 'epic historical' flavour too. For those readers who judge a book by its cover (which, let's face it, is just about all of us when we're browsing in a bookshop), the similarity between the Pressfield cover and mine tells us a lot about the 'contract' Macmillan are offering the potential reader of The Dog of the North.

Now, if only the sales figures were correspondingly similar...

Recommended Reading

A book with the personal endorsement of three of Macmillan New Writing's finest--Matt Curran, David Isaak and Aliya Whiteley--has to be good, doesn't it? Tastes will always differ, so nothing in life is certain, but this is a pretty heavy-hitting panel.

I am, therefore, starting Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire with great optimism. If I don't like it, you guys are to blame...

Chichester Writing Festival 2009

I've spent a very enjoyable weekend at the latest Festival, run by Greg and Kate Mosse in the sublime surroundings of West Dean, just north of Chichester. Greg and Kate have been very supportive of The Dog of the North since before it was published (as they are with all aspiring writers) so I'm delighted to go along to anything they run; but even without that connection the Writing Festival is an occasion to delight, with an array of stimulating panels and panellists. And it's always good to catch up with old friends and make some new ones (quite aside from the fact that some of them might buy my book...).

The panellist who seemed to make the biggest impact on the audience was Roger (R.J.) Ellory, whose novel A Quiet Belief in Angels was picked up by Richard & Judy last year. The book epitomises the "classy commercial" fiction which is currently the publishing industry's Holy Grail, but what really impressed about Roger is that he wrote 22 unpublished novels before making the breakthrough--all the time while carrying on a demanding day job. His hard work and astonishing self-belief will inspire and daunt the aspiring writer in equal measure.

If there was a common theme among all the many writers on display it was that passion and a commitment to hard work are the essentials without which publication will never happen. From my own example, minor as that may be, I'd say that's a perfect message to take away. The bottom line is that you really do need to put in the hard yards.

The next Chichester Writing Festival is scheduled for November 2010 and I'm looking forward to it already.

Bite-Size Reviews

Since submitting The Last Free City I've had a bit more time on my hands which I've been using to catch up on my reading.

First on my list was Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem. Holland is a highly-regarded historical novelist, although new to me, and while some aspects of the book failed to please, I can see why she is so well thought of. Jerusalem takes place at the time of the Second Crusade. It encompasses the final years of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, with some well-realised court intrigue with a particular emphasis on the Templar Order. Holland is first-rate in economically conveying the feel of the period, even if her dialogue is a little too modern-American for my taste. There was also a tendency to switch point of view, even within conversations, which I also found offputting. Set against this, the characterisation was subtly nuanced, with the protagonist Rannulf especially interesting. What hinted most at Holland's mastery of the form was the ending, however, which it is hard to discuss without spoilers. Suffice it to say that, in refracting what could have been a downbeat resolution through a twelfth-century lens, Holland firmly anchored the book in its period. I will certainly be reading more of her work.

Next I turned my attention to one of my favourite Jack Vance novels, To Live Forever. Vance, to my mind, gave up writing true science-fiction in the late 1950s, and this is the best of his core sf novels. It explores the practical consequences of a treatment bestowing immortality--a treatment that must be rationed if a population explosion is to be avoided. The novel follows the fortunes of Gavin Waylock, who has been cheated of his own immortality and is determined to win it back by any means at his disposal. It's one of Vance's earliest forays into the crime-fiction format he later developed in the Demon Princes and Alastor series, and is a good starting point for the science-fiction reader who wonders whether Vance will be to their taste. Published in 1956, it is the first novel to showcase the precise and pared-down style which was to become his hallmark. To Live Forever shows Vance's facility for creating bizarre but plausible societies and then pushing them to breaking point. The novel is hard to find these days and unjustly neglected. Why not track it down?

The Church of MNW

As you will all know, The Last Free City is with Macmillan at the moment, while my editor decides if it's right for them. You might view it as disingenuous in this context to review, very favourably, two MNW titles acquired by that selfsame editor. The fact is that L.C. Tyler's A Very Persistent Illusion and Doug Worgul's Thin Blue Smoke are both such very fine novels that they are sure to attract the attention of readers who do not have a vested interest in keeping their editor sweet.

Len Tyler is one of my favourite Macmillan New Writers: more to the point, he's one of my favourite writers, full stop. He lists P.G. Wodehouse among his favourite writers, and his highly distinctive voice is reminiscent of Wodehouse on a very, very heavy dose of downers. A Very Persistent Illusion is the kind of book for which the much-abused term "black comedy" was coined. His narrator, Chris Sorenson, is at once dislikeable while embodying many of the characteristics we will recognise in ourselves. His unusual pathology plays out to an unexpected ending with a sureness of touch and a facility with the devastating one-liner which will be familiar to readers of The Herring Seller's Apprentice. If your taste in humour runs to the dark, this is the book for you.

The humour in Thin Blue Smoke is of a different stamp. Worgul takes a wry look at a beautifully realised ensemble cast, refracted through the lenses of barbecue, blues, baseball and bourbon. Of these, barbecue is closest to the book's heart, and LaVerne, ex-baseball star and barbecue philosopher, is an offbeat and pleasantly flawed hero. At one point he discusses the essence of barbecue with another character (it's that kind of book), and they conclude that barbecue is the art of taking the worst cuts of meat, and transmuting them slowly over a low heat, making them into something wonderful. Worgul does something similar with his characters: poor, disadvantaged or alcoholic they may be, but over the course of this marvellous novel he smokes them until they too, turn into lives which fascinate and move us. A novel as quintessentially American (just what is a "pulled chuck"?) as A Very Persistent Illusion is British, Thin Blue Smoke deserves to be a huge success.

One of the things I really do like about Macmillan New Writing (aside from the fact that they publish me, of course) is the sheer variety of the titles they put out. Considering MNW only publishes twelve titles a year (it really is a small press hidden inside PanMacmillan), the breadth of output is remarkable. I can never read titles like the two above without that old genre writer's inferiority complex kicking in at some level: MNW publish fantasy, too! And my fantasy at that... Maybe reading two such accomplished MNW titles just after I've submitted my own was not such a good idea after all. Those not in that singular position need not hesitate, and should get hold of these two excellent novels immediately.

Into the Ether

Yesterday I sent The Last Free City to Will, my editor at Macmillan. (Will, if you read the previous more downbeat post - only joking! The Last Free City is the greatest work of literature written in English...). There is nothing more I can do to the novel unaided. If Macmillan accept it, of course, I get to work with a professional editor and that will improve it. A good editor will bring a keen and objective eye to material you may have been living with for a period of years, and if my experience of The Dog of the North is anything to go by, the effect on the text can only be positive.

Of course, Macmillan may not want the book - and as a writer you should never submit anything unless you're prepared for that outcome. I feel curiously relaxed about it, because there's nothing else I can do now to improve my chances: I've spent a year writing the best book I can, I've sent to an editor who likes my writing, and that really is all I can do. It's out of my hands now.

I'm already thinking about what I'm going to write next. For some time I had this nailed down pat: The City of Green Glass, the story which wrapped up this particular part of the Mondia cycle. Now I have other ideas, and I may reach a couple of generations back into Mondia's history instead, because there are stories there which interest me, and directly bear not only on The Last Free City but also The City of Green Glass--which is now likely to have a different title, because it's so confusingly close to its predecessor. Alternatives I'm thinking about are The Vitrine Gates and The Glass Labyrinth. I don't need to worry too much about any of this just now: until I know the fate of The Last Free City, I can't devote too much time to another project because I might have more editing to do.

For now, I can just enjoy not having a work in progress--although soon enough I will be bored, I'm sure!