I've been reading late 19th/early 20th Century books over the last few months. Pre war, pre modernism, fin de siecle, all of it set at a time of unfathomable inequality and a sense of a world holding its breath for whatever is going to be the end of it. See why I'm enjoying it so much? These are books and writers I have mainly shunned my whole life.
I'm a modernist boy me – TS Eliot, Joyce, imagism, come sweep it all away. Whereas these writers were forced upon me in the dullest two years of my English lit life at school by an olde-worlde teacher who represented everything I've hated all my life – in fact he probably did more to politicise me than he could ever have imagined – not having any.
He gave me 0/100 once for a story I wrote about someone sitting on a bench on a village green and imagining all the other people down the ages who had sat on that same bench (hey, I was 14). Nought out of one fucking hundred and he gave the scores out in front of the class...
Still, he's dead now, as were all his heroes back then. Max Beerbohm was quite the quintessential. You get the picture. Making us read The History of Mr Polly felt like water-boarding, and drove me straight into the arms of Camus and Sartre and deep unhappiness. I honestly should sue that school.
Anyway, it turns out the non science fiction novels of HG Wells are absolutelyfuckingbrilliant as ee cummings might have it, only tempered by the fact that they both share the same casual anti-Semitism. In fact, Herbert goes on like an early prototype of Nigel Farage. But Tono Bungay is easily one of the best novels I've ever read. I almost ran out of pen underlining bits. And, to summarise, there's a big war coming...
And today I read Somerset Maugham's first novel, Liza of Lambeth. Now I've always been a fan of Somerset – obviously my teacher ignored him - I discovered him when shoplifting and inhaling all the great European novels of the 20th century when I was 17 and should have been going to school and doing my A Levels (you're damned right I should sue). It's a beauty. Short, simple, heart-breaking social commentary of a world I recognise from even thirty years ago.
I am indebted to Philip Hensher's choice of short stories in his new two volume Penguin Book of the Short Story, which is very social comment based and would make a lovely present for someone bookish, for encouraging me to set aside my prejudices and go back to a very particular time in history, one which seems a frightening mirror to our own.
I'm a modernist boy me – TS Eliot, Joyce, imagism, come sweep it all away. Whereas these writers were forced upon me in the dullest two years of my English lit life at school by an olde-worlde teacher who represented everything I've hated all my life – in fact he probably did more to politicise me than he could ever have imagined – not having any.
He gave me 0/100 once for a story I wrote about someone sitting on a bench on a village green and imagining all the other people down the ages who had sat on that same bench (hey, I was 14). Nought out of one fucking hundred and he gave the scores out in front of the class...
Still, he's dead now, as were all his heroes back then. Max Beerbohm was quite the quintessential. You get the picture. Making us read The History of Mr Polly felt like water-boarding, and drove me straight into the arms of Camus and Sartre and deep unhappiness. I honestly should sue that school.
Anyway, it turns out the non science fiction novels of HG Wells are absolutelyfuckingbrilliant as ee cummings might have it, only tempered by the fact that they both share the same casual anti-Semitism. In fact, Herbert goes on like an early prototype of Nigel Farage. But Tono Bungay is easily one of the best novels I've ever read. I almost ran out of pen underlining bits. And, to summarise, there's a big war coming...
And today I read Somerset Maugham's first novel, Liza of Lambeth. Now I've always been a fan of Somerset – obviously my teacher ignored him - I discovered him when shoplifting and inhaling all the great European novels of the 20th century when I was 17 and should have been going to school and doing my A Levels (you're damned right I should sue). It's a beauty. Short, simple, heart-breaking social commentary of a world I recognise from even thirty years ago.
I am indebted to Philip Hensher's choice of short stories in his new two volume Penguin Book of the Short Story, which is very social comment based and would make a lovely present for someone bookish, for encouraging me to set aside my prejudices and go back to a very particular time in history, one which seems a frightening mirror to our own.
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