Lost Realms by Thomas Williams puzzling over value: style

 

Lost Realms by Thomas Williams (William Collins, 2022) 

Warning: Opinionating in progress.

Lost Realms  is a book with much to recommend it. The basic approach, ‘histories’ rather than ‘history’ is the only one that can deal with the ways in which Roman Britain became something else.  

What intrigues me most is two aspects of William’s style. He can write very well; evoke the landscape of post Roman Britain; negotiate the tangle of evidence and contending theories that characterise the period in clear and unambiguous prose. But so much of the book relies on the reader not paying attention. 

 

The following is a characteristic example of general style, and it illustrates two problems. The author is remembering climbing the steps to Tintagel as a child:

 

It felt endless that stairway-like the steps that ascended to the pass of Cirith Ungol from the Morgul Vale in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. (p.146)

 

You could delete everything from the dash to the full stop and the information would be conveyed successfully: 

 

It felt endless, that stairway.

 

It’s a common experience, especially for children. The author can rely on most readers  to understand his point (even if his intrusion of the memory into the narrative adds nothing especially relevant to the subject at hand). What follows the dash is superfluous in terms of information and is an attempt at ‘style’ but it's a strange thing to find in a history book. 

 

If this were a personal memoire of reading Tolkien, then the comparison would be at home if it were reversed. ‘When I read about the steps that ascended to the pass of Cirith Ungol from the Morgul Vale in Tolkien’s The Two Towers I remembered the steps that lead to Tintagel.’ p.146

 

This would be the normal movement, illuminating the fictional by comparing it with a real, repeatable experience that is not unique to the individual. Williams consistently goes the opposite way, trying to illuminate the historical by comparing it to the fictional. (More about this in the next post.)

 

But what happens to the reader (me, for example) who has no idea what Morgul Vale or Cirith Ungol are? That question points to an underlying assumption, and an impossible one: the assumption that the reader shares the writer’s fictional knowledge and his attitudes. Williams’ range of reference is eclectic: The Wicker Man, the Shining, Star Wars, the complete works of Tolkien. But no concession is being made to the reader. At one point rather than rewrite an unimportant but obviously obscure reference, he would rather add a footnote to explain his explanation. 

 

…that will embody an oddly retro-futuristic aesthetic, like the neo-Byzantine fantasies of the Trigon Empire…(p178)

 

The overall impression is that the author is not making an effort to communicate, rather, he is putting on a performance, and the performance assumes the reader shares his references, his fascination with his own memories, and his opinions. Which effectively means the Model Reader of this book can only be a model Thomas Williams. 

 

Sometimes this positioning is insidious: an anecdote will be introduced as ‘comic’ or ‘blackly comic’ rather than simply left to stand alone. Sometimes it’s unintentionally funny.

 

The story of Uther and Ygerna is, for modern readers, an uncomfortable read.

 

Stop. Which modern readers? All modern readers? Are we expected to believe that those who watched Vikings and Game of Thrones, or read Fifty Shades of Grey are disturbed by this? Some modern readers? Students in universities who are told to feel uncomfortable? 

 

But our author confesses:

 

I remember finding it troubling as a child and it stills leaves me feeling queasy. Not I think because the tale is in itself unusually unsettling (there are many, far more violent sentiments expressed in older Welsh and English poetry) but more for the horny relish with which Geoffrey tells it and the enormous appeal he clearly expected it to have for its intended audience…p146

 

I must admit I laughed aloud at this. The thought of Geoffrey writing 12^th century erotica is almost as funny as thinking that what he wrote could have aroused your average clerical reader or titillated his ‘aristocratic’ listeners.  

 

Leaving aside the thought that horny relish sounds like a strange kind of novelty pickle, I wonder how many people reading this have read Geoffrey, or how recently or how carefully Williams has? If you’re reading this and have a copy of Geoffrey handy, stop now and read what Geoffrey wrote about Uther in Tintagel. It’s only a few lines. Does this sound like ‘horny relish’?  Then go back and read Vortigern’s meeting with Rowena: it’s not long either. Then remember what Geoffrey did in his day job. 'Deceived' is not a positive term.

 

But most people won’t stop and read Geoffrey. They won’t wonder which readers are disturbed, or whether horny relish is an accurate description. It sounds good. It sticks in the memory. The book, like many recent ones, relies on the reader never stopping to consider what the words on the page mean. The glib references aren’t meant to be examined, or even given any thought. The author is entertaining himself and scattering his references with no real interest in ‘meaning’. If the reader isn't meant to think too deeply about this; did the author? 

 

This might sound like I’m being over critical about trivial detail, but it leads to a discussion of how the material is presented and understood, for which see next post. 

Review of A Man of Heart by Liam Guilar

A Man of Heart is reviewed in the December print edition of Quadrant. The text of the review is on line, you can read it by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page, which will open a new window. 

Heart of the Island Nation

 ..'.a celebration of long-neglected narrative traditions – an epic for an era which ironizes everything, a tribute to this once and future island and its stoically enduring people.'

...Guilar tells of Vortigern, king (fl. ca. 425-450) of the newly independent Britons who, according to traditional historiography, used the Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa to protect his kingdom against Picts and Scots, and granted them land. Vortigern has been mythologised, but here feels eminently real, thanks to the poet’s sweeping historical sense, and convincingly gritty detail of how those long-lost landscapes must have looked, how those nation-building lives might really have felt.

...We open in shadows suited to descending ‘Dark Ages’, as kingdoms fade into view, and a strategic marriage is being considered sadly in a crepuscular columned room:

“There was never enough light. / Even in summer, shade / and shadows contour brightness. / At night, torches and lamps / shiver the edge of sight.”

A Romano-British matron is thinking of her daughter courted by unrefined “men of power” – regrettably necessary allies in a province turned upside down, where the uncivilized hold the sword-hand, and sophisticates overnight have only squatters’ rights.   

You can read the rest of the review by clicking on the link. It will take you to the author's page. 

Review of a Man of Heart

Michael Alexander.

 

Sad News. I heard today that Michael Alexander died last month. 

A translator of Old English, writer of one of the most judicious books on Ezra Pound, historian of literature and a fine poet in his own right. His interests ranged widely. There's a good book on Medievalism, a fine history of English Literature, and a book on Shakespeare that stands out amongst the flood of books on that subject as being both thoughtful and thought provoking. 

I bought this copy of Beowulf in 1976. I liked the cover. I knew nothing about Old English. 

But I was hooked. There was something strange and intriguing and I wanted to know what the original sounded like. It was one of the main reasons I studied medieval literature.  

Many years later, banging my head against Pound's Cantos I found his book The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound. He'd met the man, dedicated his Old English Translations to him 'without irony'. But his discussion of Pound's Seafarer is the most level headed I've read. 

Even more years later, when Pn Review published my version of 'Wulf and Eadwacer' in the same edition Michael was remembering his meeting with Pound,  I thanked the editor and told him that I owed  my interest in Medieval Literature to Michael's translations. The email was passed on, a correspondence followed. 

I was the awkward school boy staring at that Penguin book in W.H.Smith's in Coventry trying not to write fan letters.  He was generous with his time. Stories about meeting Pound, and David Jones. Links in the chain. 

When he read A Presentment of Englishry he was complimentary, but he also wrote; 'It wasn't all plague rape and pillage'. He was right. There's a poem in A Man of Heart called 'These are the good old days #1' which begins 'There must have been sunshine./  Good days when a man unbent from his work/ and smiled to see the healthy children play'. Originally 'For Michael Alexander' I removed the dedication, thinking the piece wasn't good enough. I wish I hadn't. 

It's strange the debts I owe to strangers. Sometimes I'm given the chance to thank them.

Safe travelling.