The Ballad of John Clare - Hugh Lupton, 2010.

Hugh Lupton’s fictional account of a year in the teenage life of ‘peasant poet’ John Clare has been released to the world with the same neglect which Clare’s poetry has suffered over the years, leading to the poet’s glaring omission from the “Big Six” of nineteenth century British Romantic poetry, that is to say, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge and Blake. Clare’s was a mind wrought with anguish over failed love and environmental destruction, leading to institutionalisation for much of his life.

One of the UK’s most prominent professional storytellers – when he begun in the early 1980s there were a mere six in the country- Lupton’s prose style is frank but heartening, simple but endearing, albeit distinctly unoriginal. However when the author sets out to create a fictional world of factual characters, the narrative’s originality and complexity more than make up for a folk revivalist’s lack of literate identity.

Set in a year of the seventeen year old poet’s youth in the Northamptonshire countryside, Lupton guides us through the changing fortunes of the small community of villages which comprised Clare’s home, framed against a calendar of various religious days and festivals, many of which cease to hold any importance two hundred years later in the present day. As enclosure of public rural land begins to take shape and rich farmers divide amongst them that which was for centuries before common peasant land, gypsies are shunned, families are ruined and extreme measures sought in the shadow of the impending Industrial Revolution. The Ballad of John Clare addresses issues that still hold sway today: those of the destruction of our environment, the gap between the richest and poorest in our societies, and the factors in place to perpetuate this divide.

John Clare’s first encounters with love, however, are the real heartstring tugging elements of this novel; a blossoming courtship is destroyed for reasons beyond that of Clare’s poor status- that being the widely held view that his match was deemed unfit by her father, triggering the poet’s descent into madness and poverty. Ultimately, there is still time to save the planet and redress the balance of wealth, but Clare’s descent into despair and obscurity cannot be altered, and as a result his poetry remains unheard and unappreciated by the majority today.

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston, 1937.

Perhaps the most famous product of the inter-war black artistic movement that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston’s account of a woman’s pursuit of happiness over the course of twenty years and three marriages provides the modern day reader with a telling insight into a black, and female, existence in a segregated America.

We are often told that the first rule of creative writing is to write about what you know. The similarities between the author and her protagonist, Janie Crawford, are striking. Hurston herself grew up in the all-black Floridian town of Eatonville, whose founding is recounted in the novel, and the plot’s chronology roughly matches that of her own age and lifetime. Racism is unsurprisingly inherently present in Their Eyes Were Watching God, however it is in Hurston’s observations on the place of black women in early twentieth-century America which deserve the greatest admiration. Janie’s loss of innocence and quest for happiness through two failed marriages forms a plot culminating in the factual Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, leading to tragedy, but ultimately contentment for our heroine, who succeeds in breaking the typecasts that had previously been cemented for the black woman in literature; overbearing matriarch or slut.*

Hurston’s phonetic spelling of her characters’ speech lends the novel an intrinsic credibility for which the author deserves to be lauded. Such nuances of spoken communication that are expressed in her dialogue are predominantly limited to a black, southern-USA context; however any initial comprehension difficulties to such alien language that may be encountered are soon overcome by the authority and standing this gives the text. The result this method has had on Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison is evident, and Zora Neale Hurston’s place in African American literary history is testament to the timeless splendour of Their Eyes Were Watching God.



*According to Sherley Anne Williams

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest, 2010.

Deerhunter are nothing if not productive. Last month’s Halcyon Digest was the Atlanta-based psychedelic foursome’s sixth major release in as many years; not surprising considering principal songwriter Bradford Cox’s battle with Marfan syndrome, shortening his life expectancy, and perhaps a wish to release the most material possible. More explicitly than in previous work, Cox’s illness is disturbingly prevalent lyrically in Halcyon Digest, lamenting in Basement Scene his aversion to growing old, while Memory Boy and Desire Lines express a vehement repulsion of solitude. However, album closer He Would Have Laughed (this year’s Nothing Ever Happened, Deerhunter fans) documents the boredom associated with ageing and perhaps an acceptance of his position.

Had Coldplay written major hit Clocks after spending their youth listening to My Bloody Valentine rather than U2, then first single Revival might have been the result; guitarist Lockett Pundt produces the band’s most agreeable pop melody yet, however he really comes to the fore in self-penned Desire Lines. Beginning in the same vein as the current American surf pop scene advocated by Best Coast and Wavves, the album’s seven-minute centrepiece eventually culminates with Deerhunter’s trademark hypnotism. Stand-out Helicopter is the band at their thunderous best, as waves of warped guitar drone to a climatic crescendo of Cox’s longing whines concerning loss of company and a minimal existence, from the peculiar viewpoint of a fictional Russian prostitute.

For all their somewhat downbeat lyrics, and colossal, engulfing, none-too-uplifting production, Halcyon Digest stands true as Deerhunter’s most life-affirming work yet. Saxophones and mandolins are delightfully unexpected additions to the band’s perpetually overwhelming sound, which was in danger of becoming monotonous and overbearing had it not been tweaked and improved over the course of their relentless output, which hopefully will not be capped anytime soon.

Oroonoko - Aphra Behn, 1688.

“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn...for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”
Virginia Woolf

Oroonoko, Aphra Behn’s most studied novel, was particularly revolutionary; while its publication in 1688 is widely heralded as the birth of the English novel, a black protagonist and female author are surely the more staggering aspects of Behn’s glorious portrait of an African prince enslaved and disparaging representation of white supremacy in the quickly expanding British empire.

African tribal prince Oroonoko, who the author claimed to exist, is unanimously adored by all that meet him. Behn ceaselessly praises the man’s physique, appearance, character and heart throughout, and it is such attributes which highlight the injustice of his fate, as he and his maiden lover Imoinda are captured as slaves by British traders from Surinam in a radical account of the barbarism of slavery.

Aphra Behn is known to have worked as a spy under King Charles II, however debate rages as to whether she actually visited the South American colony. While her descriptions of tropical landscape and indigenous people are generally accurate, minor descrepancies are suggested. The majority of Europeans named in the novel were named as true contemporaneous figures, a somewhat peculiar example of poetic license to use if Behn had not travelled extensively, as few Western characters escape positively. One Englishman who escapes without condemnation in Oroonoko is George Marten, a loyal Cromwellian, while Royalist colonists appear malevolent and sadistic. Behn herself was a famously militant supporter of the monarchy, thus her coupling of tyrannical brutality with political ideology unquestionably not in line with her own seems bizarre.

A sentimentalised love story which established amatory fiction as a precursor to the modern novel, or a cruel reminder of British colonial cruelty in a time of social and scientific turbulence? Oroonoko is unquestionably, and, most importantly, a valuable representation of each.

Looking Backward - Edward Bellamy, 1888.

Edward Bellamy’s fantasy of a socialist utopia outlined in Looking Backward is, with hindsight, ambitious and a little naive, however his depth of research and impassioned critique of contemporaneous America provide much food for thought on our current economic system.

A political manifesto thinly veiled, though admittedly the romantic sub-plot entertains thoroughly, in fiction, Bellamy’s best-known work details the journey of a wealthy though not immoral man from Boston in 1887 to the same city at the dawn of the 21st century via a deep, 112 year long, sleep. Private enterprise has disappeared in the USA of 2000 where every man and woman from the age of 21 until 45 serves the “industrial army” in some way or form, as the state, the sole capitalist, provides for them, in complete equality. Crime and injustice are unheard of, as is, seemingly by consequence, unhappiness. The author reveals this fantasy through the lengthy conversations of his protagonist, accidental time traveller Julian West, and his newfound friend Dr. Leete, whose amiable family give the 19th century Bostonian all he requires following his obvious shock.

Bellamy’s recurring amazement throughout Looking Backward is directed at his fellow man, who it seems to him must merely co-operate with each other rather than compete in order to find true happiness. He reserves blame for this though, insisting instead that it is a mistake, a blunder of gigantic proportions that has set mankind on this path; when every man has a family to feed, it is not with malicious intent that he steals the bread from another’s grasp.

The novel’s publication led to the spawning of many socialist clubs devoted to propagating the author’s ideas, however, although Bellamy foresaw credit cards, covered shopping malls and the widespread use of the radio in Looking Backward, it is, alas, with regret that his more general world plan was not more effectively realised.

The Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare, 1594.

Dir. Rebecca Gatward
London Globe Theatre, Wednesday 1st September 2010.

Often dismissed as his most light-hearted and trivial play, and therefore one of those least worth intellectual study, The Comedy of Errors proves over four centuries since its debut, that when writing purely for entertainment and not artistic merit, Shakespeare was very adept at entertaining the masses.
Testament to this is the wonderful Globe Theatre on London's South Bank. For a mere £5 one can stand in the "pit" and watch the world's best Shakespearian actors just metres away. On a warm September night this is most inviting, as the seasons change perhaps not, but who is to say that darker tragedies such as Hamlet and King Lear might be enhanced by a less inviting atmosphere.

In an RSC cast assembled by many faces recognisable through constant bit parts in Midsomer Murders, Lewis, Casualty and the like, a child-like enthusiasm for the slapstick humour of the late sixteenth century was executed perfectly. The play concerns a master and a servant, who arrive in Ephesus to face their identical twins, long since separated, who are also master and serf. Farcical scenes ensue, with Shakespeare's iron grip on the lexiconical playfulness of the English language proving sidesplitting to a modern day audience as it would have been when the bard himself was in the arena.

However, the masterstroke of the performance is the decision to cast only one actor each in the part of both twins, with the removal of a pair of spectacles the only clue to which sibling is being portrayed. The self-awareness and parody evident in the final scenes when it is necessary to have both twins on stage concurrently, with a most simple and playful device taking centre stage. The best night out you'll find for £5 anywhere in the country.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell, 2010.

David Mitchell, during an interview, once asked himself the question,
“Would I have become the same writer if I’d spent the last six years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, or on an oil rig or in the circus?”
with reference to the time he spent in Japan after graduating from Kent University. Considering that four of his five novels are based predominantly around Japan and East Asia, the answer, as he himself is probably aware, is a resounding ‘no’. And it is for this time spent teaching English in the Orient that we must be thankful. While Mitchell’s previous novel, Black Swan Green, was nothing to complain about, the early 1980s Worcestershire setting of the author’s youth lacked the mythical mysticism, and ability as a storyteller, of his other works. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is a gratifying return to his unique method that has made him one of the most exciting writers of his generation.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet recalls the Kansei-era Japan of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, a world closed to foreign influence, where Christianity is a crime and honour and deference the highly-valued virtues. In this mysterious land there is but one nook of occidental influence, the man-made island of Dejima, off the Nagasaki coast, the trading post of the Dutch East India company, where the only Europeans in Japan must live, and never cross to the mainland. De Zoet falls in love with a Japanese midwife (Mitchell himself is married to a Japanese woman), however her sudden disappearance provides the Dutch clerk with the grounds to discover the dark occurrences happening behind Japanese officials’ shady dealings, and their ambiguous moral codes, twisted into rationality by misread Buddhist teachings. Mitchell intersperses his chapters regarding De Zoet’s unattainable love with others pertaining to the downfall of the Dutch East India company, and the onset of the British on Dejima, as her vast nineteenth century global empire began to take shape.

The sheer research Mitchell must have put in to write The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is staggering. A firm knowledge of Japanese tradition and lifestyle is evident from Mitchell’s previous novels Ghostwritten and number9dream, however the secretive nature of Japan two centuries ago is akin to writing a accurate encyclopaedia today of Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea. Coupled with this, the author’s child-like imagination is unparalleled in contemporary English literature; such metaphor and similie regularly causes the reader to stop and re-read out of utter delight, whilst the page or so of rhyming description at the start of one of De Zoet’s later chapters is fresh, unexpected and exceptionally beautiful.

David Mitchell's fifth novel is one which will ensnare all but the most closed minds, a lengthened fable which posterity will hopefully treasure in both university libraries and children’s bedside tables for years to come.