Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler

There is something rather wonderful about choosing and reading a book while knowing very little about it. I knew nothing at all about James Schuyler or his 1958 novel Alfred and Guinevere when I picked it up in Hay on Wye last year - all I knew was that I loved NYRB Classics (and this one, from 2001, shows just how timeless their designs are - looking beautifully fresh 14 years later. Even though I can't find out what the painting is). Not being a poetry buff, I didn't realise that that was the arena in which Schuyler made his name - but I do now know that he had a knack with words that was rather extraordinary.

The eponymous Alfred and Guinevere are children who are sent to stay with their grandparents. Most of this slim novel is given in their dialogue, excerpts from Guinevere's diary, and letters that she writes. The novella probably says their ages, but I must have flown past that section. Guinevere is the elder; Alfred is pretty unschooled in reading and writing.

Undoubtedly the greatest achievement in this novel is Schuyler's ability to capture the cadences of children's conversation, particularly the back-and-forth of sibling arguments, which leap from battle to truce to battle, weaving in long-standing disagreements, I-know-something-you-don't-know novelties, and (most beautifully captured of all) snatches stolen from the conversation of adults around them, and novels the children probably shouldn't be reading. This is a trick Schuyler uses throughout: they borrow idioms and metaphors that sound extremely out of kilter with their childish bickering, because - of course - that is exactly what children do do. Perhaps particularly those who feel adrift from the adults around them, and uncertain of the events that have occurred (more on that soon). Here's an example from a letter Betty writes to Guinevere, her erstwhile friend:

Dear Guinevere,Thanks for the note. It is a shame boys make so much trouble and go around tattle-taling and spoiling intimate friendships. Of course your knocking me down like that made a permanent wound in my feelings which is slow to heal but it is not you at bottom I blame it is them. It was not me or Lois who told her mother or my mother what my mother told your mother she said you said. It was Stanley who told his mother and she told the other mothers. So you see how it goes.It is a shame what happens but I guess you have to take it as it comes and not spoil your life with vain regrets.More in sadness than in hate,Elizabeth Carolanne House

And there is this...

"You're scared to walk across the bridge and look. I can tell you're scared when you try to look like Mother.""I'll run away and leave you in the gathering gloom at the mercy of reckless drivers and we'll see who's scared.""I'll throw myself in the gutter and get sick and die, then you'll be sorry.""No I won't. I'll go to your funeral and say, 'Doesn't he look sweet in his coffin,' and cry, then everybody will feel sorry for me and give me things. I'll wear a black dress with black accessories and a hat with a black veil. Black is very becoming and makes you look older. Then I'll take your insurance money and go on a trip and meet a dark, interesting stranger."

Lest you think that this is a cutesy book, I should say that - behind the well-observed dialogue - there is an indistinct darkness. I suppose Guinevere's macabre callousness might already dismiss ideas of Brady Bunch levels of cuteness, but there is a much darker subtext. The children briefly discuss having found a dead body. At one very poignant moment, Guinevere blurts out "I'm sorry Daddy hit you", but it is not explored further than that. Schuyler gives just enough shade to make clear that all is not sunny.

But, at the same time, this is a very funny book. It is the sort of humour that stems almost entirely from acute observation - and that, if coupled with a slight (slight) heightened tone, is probably the thing I find most amusing. In only 126 pages, Schuyler combines humour and darkness in a really exceptional way.

Alfred and Guinevere is deceptively quick and simple. But, oh, there is an awful lot going on - not least an authorial restraint and style that I heartily applaud. If I had to pick any other novel that it reminded me of, I would pick another NYRB beauty - Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi.

Have you read this? Do you know anything about James Schuyler? I now want to find out much more!

Shirley Jackson - The Sundial, Hangsaman, and The Bird's Nest

Oh, this has been a difficult bunch of books to keep quiet about.  And I haven't really managed it, looking back, but I could have been much less restrained.  Now that Shiny New Books is unveiled, I can finally start linking to my Century of Books reviews - and I have to kick off with the Penguin Classics reprints of Shirley Jackson's novels. (Incidentally, they tick two dates on my Century of Books list.)

Best among them is The Sundial.  If I didn't already have a Shirley Jackson title in my 50 Books You Must Read list, then this would be on it.  Annoyingly (and these are the sorts of things I keep quiet from Shiny New Books, but can't hide from you, dear friends) I'd spent a mini fortune on a copy of The Sundial three years ago, back when it was very scarce... and yet hadn't got around to reading it until the reprints came out.  Oops.

So this is what I'll do with my links to SNB reviews.  A little bit of intro, and then the first line or two of the review, to hook you in... click on the link to read my review of Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, and The Sundial.

"You can more or less divide readers’ familiarity with Shirley Jackson’s works into separate levels"...

We Were Amused - Rachel Ferguson

Thanks so much for the wonderful suggestions on my art post the other day; I'll reply individually soon.  Some of you also liked the pictures I'd found, which was lovely - I really have fallen in love with Korhinta since I posted it, despite not much liking anything else I've turned up by Vilmos Aba-Novak.  Right, books.

Anyone who saw my Top Books list for 2012 will know that I love an autobiography, particularly if it's one by an author from the interwar period.  Rachel Ferguson seems such a complex, interesting novelist (and an actress to boot) that I was excited to read her autobiography We Were Amused (1958).  Well, it was definitely an interesting, involving read - and it's made Rachel Ferguson seem more eccentric and complex than I could ever have imagined!

I've only read a couple of her novels - The Brontes Went to Woolworths and Alas, Poor Lady - which could scarcely be more different.  The former is a madcap tangle about a family who have no boundary between fact and fantasy; the latter is a sombre examination of the fate for aging unmarried women in the period.  Both are excellent - you might all be more familiar with The Brontes Went to Woolworths, and tomorrow I'll be posting a longer excerpt from We Were Amused which relates to that novel.

Truth be told, I was a bit anxious after the first chunk of the book.  I often write here, when reviewing memoirs, that the author mentions miserable events without creating anything remotely like a misery memoir.  Well, Rachel Ferguson gets close... with her love for the dramatic and heightened, she describes her mother's childhood as utterly miserable, and her maternal grandmother as a tyrant.  Here's a typically bizarre Ferguson paragraph:

'Cumber', as our Greenwood cousins called her ('because she cumbers the earth'), was, as Annie Cave, a member of what Wells has termed that essential disaster of the nineteenth century, the large family.  Having married Dr. Cumberbatch, she herself produced five children who lived, a sixth who had the sense to die in infancy, plus at least two who never even succeeded to cradle status.  And all this without anaesthetics, in an era of tight lacing.

Details of Cumber's ogredom palled a little, and I confess that I couldn't wait for Ferguson to set aside childhoods - her mother's and her own - and get to the business of living.  More particularly, living as an aspiring dancer/actress and, later, writer.  These sections were rather wonderful.  Ferguson takes her haphazard life rather casually - all the opportunities and achievements which came her way are thrown in without much explanation, so she'll suddenly be working for Punch, or having her first novel published, or going on a theatrical tour, without much notice.  It's definitely better than labouring all these points, but it's a curious division of spoils considering how many pages she devotes to her experiences judging cat shows...

For most of us, I think it's this middle section of the autobiography which will most appeal.  It's so full of intriguing details and behind-the-scenes information (come back tomorrow for background info on The Brontes Went To Woolworths!) which is invariably interesting to those of us who have never published a novel or appeared on the stage.  She does expect a lot of knowledge of interwar actors, dancers, and journalists which I am (alas) unable to provide - but I need no prompting when she talks about E.F. Benson, E.M. Delafield, and Violet Hunt.

Even if Rachel Ferguson had no creative career upon which to reflect, We Were Amused would be special for her striking, surreal turn of phrase.  Here is a couple of examples:

Our hall wallpaper, which for some reason was not replaced when we moved in, was a real caution and an abomination in the sight of the Lord: it suggested fir-trees and pineapples in a very bad thunderstorm indeed.

and

Socially Teddington was still of the epoch which invited its doctors to dinner but seldom, if ever, its dentists.

Very amusing! But, if only one could believe that Rachel Ferguson were sufficiently detached!  Perhaps it is foolish to expect an author to be detached in their autobiography, but her moments of irony and satire are weighed down by her equally peculiar outlook on many topics.  Yes, she may have written that twist about dentists with a grin on her face, but she is deadly serious when she suggests the working class have got too big for their boots and are 'overpaid'.  Complaining about the lack of live-in servants feels madly outdated for 1958, she seems faintly insane when writing 'the only cathedral town that doesn't tire one out is York' (what can she mean?), and I lost the thread completely when it came to the chapter on ghosts.  Ferguson assumes a level of credulity (not to mention a familiarity with famous hauntings of the 1930s) which left me entirely cold towards her my-sister's-friend's-cousin-heard sort of anecdotes about poltergeists and phantom footsteps.

Even stranger, to me, is her total fixation upon London - well, Kensington.  She describes a period spent in a different area of London as though she'd been exploring a South American country, or taken a voyage to Moscow.  She has no time at all for any of Britain's other cities, towns, and villages.  Life begins and ends with Kensington for Ferguson - she'll often assert that somebody is a Kensingtonian, and consider it credentials enough to satisfy the reader.  I shall never understand the London-centric mind, and I should probably give up hoping I ever shall.

So, it's a curious mix.  It's almost all fun and interesting, but the selection and apportion of pages - not to mention the tone and turn of phrase - certainly mark out Rachel Ferguson as an eccentric.  If you'd wondered how much of a departure she found The Brontes Went To Woolworths, well... if anything, she seems to have toned things down for the novel.