Travelogue 1002 – August 31
The Present Perfect
Part Eleven

In his essay “Against Exercise”, Mark Greif discusses the enforced intimacy of the modern exercise culture and health consciousness. His example is the sweaty jogger forcing his presence on innocent citizens anywhere and anytime, with impunity. It’s an embarrassing read because that’s me, basically, jogging half-dressed and sweaty through the other people’s space for forty years now. Standing outside it all a moment, you have to admit it’s a strange culture that has absorbed the jogger’s behaviour as a norm. Greif writes about a “liquidation of a sense of the public, and what can be made collectively in public, along with the last untouched spheres of privacy, such that biological life, good and bad, will be always seen, in all locations, and all we have.” What was private is public, and intimacy is a demand of the citizen of our time.

I’m returning briefly to my summer topic, language and history. You may remember, I had been leaping to grand conclusions with scant justification, as I’m obliged to do in a blog. I was cooking up a theory about the advent of a new medievalism, presaged by a widespread debasement of our language. Then I followed a long digression about historical fiction. It’s high time I return to my original wild theory.

I’ve based my observations about language on my experience as an examiner for language proficiency exams. One trend I’ve noticed is toward the familiarization of all language. Formal registers fade, and all experiences become concrete and immediate. Hypotheticals fade, as do verb tenses that remove events from the concrete and immediate. I’ll argue that these developments are a symptom of alienation.

Since the end of the Cold War, we’ve seen a groundswell of traditionalist and right-wing protest against the modern world order. Much of the cause is simple alienation. I’ve wondered whether systems have become too complex for the mundane human imagination. Specifically, hasn’t the complexity of the modern world far outpaced the capacity of the average human mind to understand the mechanics? In our grandparents’ era, it was still possible – and fun – to figure out the new technologies, learn how to fix the car and the appliances, build radio sets at home, build circuit boards in the playroom. That generation grew up to participate in school boards, PTAs and city councils, and not just to shout opposition down and ‘own the libs’, but to be part of the civic process, a process they understood and believed in.

Now there’s a sense that all systems have escaped our ability to assimilate and understand, and we’ve given up. Ironically, as the knowledge base of the species grows exponentially, the individual share in it decreases. There’s sense in that, but what if the knowledge base of the individual is shrinking absolutely? There are plenty of adults who couldn’t identify the trees or flowers in their neighbourhood park, couldn’t re-assemble a single device in their house, couldn’t describe governance or finance in any coherent way, couldn’t describe human anatomy in any coherent way, couldn’t identify Kansas on a map, and would be helpless in any crisis that robbed them of the support of their reviled government.

The world has become alien, a set of conspiracies in which science and technology perpetuate sinister, crazy-making narratives and in which a ‘deep state’ rules us by means of an inscrutable and oppressive technocracy. If I’m right, and humanity cannot abide systems – no matter how effective - that have grown overly complex, then we have entered into a struggle to maintain five hundred years’ worth of development. I’m not confident that progress will win.

If I’m anywhere near being right here, then I wonder what happens if we compare our current state of alienation to a mindset from the Middle Ages, before that five hundred years of progress that define the modern state?

Travelogue 1001 – August 20
Interlude: An Even Grand
Part Two

When I wrote the first blog, G.W. was President of the U.S., and it was still his first term. It seems like a time of innocence in retrospect. The past never knows what we know. We usually envy those in the past for their ignorance. I can’t think of a decade during my lifetime more worthy of oblivion than the 2010s, at least in terms of public memory. We naively thought G.W. was bad.

August has been a month our current president would like to forget. Little did he think Afghanistan would be the pie in his face. Here’s a man who always wanted to be president. He first ran in the 80s. If you’d told him then he’d be president one day, he might or might not have been surprised. He wouldn’t have been shocked. It was a goal he had visualized often. If you’d told him there would be challenges, he would have squared his shoulders and said that he would be ready. But what if you’d told him his presidency would largely consist of clean-up duty after one of America’s foulest demagogues, and that one onerous task would be to withdraw from G.W. Bush’s war in Afghanistan? Well, that seems like an objectively positive task. But then you have to inform him that the withdrawal will have to conform to an agreement reached with the demagogue and prejudicial to just about everyone’s interests but the Taliban’s, the terrorist organization that provoked America into war in the first place. You might have left the man speechless, this man who had had his eye on presidency since the 80s.

The old saw tells us “the devil is in the details”. It’s the devil’s world, then. Reality is made of details. Our desires are made of lighter stuff. They never account for details. That’s why a result never feels like a desire.

How could I have foreseen walking down the still streets of Nieuwekerk a/d Ijssel with this little girl? Imagine a fortune-teller telling me in 2004 that I would live in the Netherlands one day, and I would have two lovely daughters. That news would have been a pleasant surprise, but a mild surprise. Instead, O mysterious fortune teller, show me a picture of this town and this girl by my side. Imagine the shock as I try to assimilate all the detail.

If there were a science to prediction, it would begin and end with details. Without them, vague predictions are curiosities, little better than declarations of probability. They’re like chapter titles that excite little more than sighs or polite expressions of anticipation. If there were a science to prediction, it would be time travel. The concept reminds me yet again of the notion put forward by some physicists that time is not a stream but a series of stones (in the stream? I’m getting lost in my metaphor) all co-existent and given ‘life’ by our attention. Or maybe time is like a series of one thousand blog entries, all available to the reader at once, the life of a writer unfolding in outline, each piece a stepping-stone brought to life by … ah, but this stretches credibility too far.

Travelogue 1000 – August 19
Interlude: An Even Grand 

Part One

It’s the times you find yourself in the odd and unknown corners of the world that you realize how far you have come. It’s not the glamourous stops, the passages through Amsterdam, that give you real insight into your life. Those are the feel-good stops, the times you reflect on how grand you’ve had it. It’s the days you find yourself on the ‘Sprinter’ train, the local train, sitting with the truest sort of strangers, meaning people who are not tourists and have no reason to think they’re among tourists, when you’re passing through countryside at slow speeds, disembarking at stops you never could have predicted, when you’re walking along plain, lived-in streets that feature in no one’s Instagram page, no one’s coffee-table biography, places like Nieuwekerk aan de Ijssel, places where there’s nothing but apartment buildings along kilometres of roadway, even directly outside the town’s railway station, it’s when you’re off the beaten path that you realize how far you’ve come.

I find myself walking these preternaturally still streets today because I’ve signed up my Baby Jos for a three-day hockey camp. (That’s field hockey. In Europe, you’re obliged to specify ice hockey, whereas in North America it’s assumed that ‘hockey’ means the kind on ice.) The camp is taking place at the pitches in Nieuwekerk a/d Ijssel, and those pitches lie a good kilometre from the station. We take the train, and then we walk. This is one quiet town.

One thousand came quickly. At least from this end of the telescope. From the other side, from the blog’s point of origin, this distance would have been unthinkable. Propose to me in 2004 that I would write one thousand blog entries, I might have been dazzled. Propose that Number One Thousand would be about a walk across the Dutch municipality of Nieuwekerk a/d Ijssel, and I would have been stumped. What could that possibly mean? Propose that I would be walking my daughter to hockey practice, and that would have simply been beyond my ken. “Why would my daughter be playing ice hockey?” I would have asked.

Travelogue 999 – August 13
The Present Perfect
Part Ten

In McCullough’s novel, “The First Man in Rome”, Marius and Sulla advance upon their fates with calm confidence, their two fates intertwined. History documents their mutual history, even if only in outline. Sulla is a loyal lieutenant during Marius’s glorious wars. Later, the two turn against each other, and their struggle tears Rome apart. This first book in McCullough’s saga documents only the first part of their shared tale, Marius’s glory days and Sulla’s first rise to prominence.

The plot and cast of characters are determined. Open the stage curtains on Republican Rome. This is old-style historical fiction, in which the setting is panoramic and in which the reader is to be schooled. That tone is set in the pages and pages of notes and maps and glossaries at front and back of the book. The language is clumsy at times. The characterizations are crude. Marius in his virtue and competence can seem wooden. Efforts to draw Sulla’s perversity can simply be embarrassing; any writer should know the risks involved in attempting a shorthand for depravity. And yet, the McCullough advances on her project with calm confidence. (The parallel with her characters is irresistible. She is Marius dreaming of seven consulships. “No bibliography is appended,” she writes with characteristic bravado. “My scholarship will be obvious enough to those qualified to judge ….” Far from resenting this statement, I smiled. I found it perfectly suited to the mood of the book.)

Forward the narrative goes, from its first awkward moments through the ungainly mass of its pages, and, far from tripping over itself, it gathers a mysterious momentum and charm. Will I read the next book in the series? I probably will. I enjoyed the story, and I learned quite a bit. It was easy enough to separate McCullough’s improvisations from the facts as we know them, even if she hadn’t detailed them in her voluminous notes. She indulges some of the darker speculations about Sulla’s successes, speculations that have existed for centuries, actually. And she postulates some tactical marriage alliances for which there’s no evidence. They are not likely – she invented an additional aunt for Julius Caesar, for example, - but they’re not unreasonable, either, given how important family ties were in the Republic. And it adds some humanity without requiring grand architectures about motive and personality.

What have I learned from the juxtaposition of the two authors, Mantel and McCullough? How important are factors like authenticity and the integrity of voice? McCullough’s characters are barely believable in any century, let alone true to Roman voices a few thousand years old. And yet, the book is engaging. Mantel’s voice is so much more crafted and believable, and yet the scope of the character’s viewpoint is so circumscribed as to make the reading feel like an austere practice, the tone putting me more in mind of a writer’s (idealized?) life than a courtier’s, being so hushed and reflective.

McCullough’s characters collect just enough psychological coherence to sustain the narrative. Ultimately, readers don’t need much in a story to hang some sentiment upon, and, despite their occasional two-dimensionality, Marius and Sulla capture ready sympathy. We root for Marius to show those darn senators what he’s made of and for Sulla to reform himself and take the honourable path. Ironically, given the better writing and more thoughtful characterizations, Mantel’s characters win less sympathy. There’s dread. There’s a longing for things to turn out differently. There’s the cold shadow of fate, overtaking the good with the bad. But these are cold responses, compared to the more inviting world of McCullough’s Rome.

How does that happen? Could it be that simpler characters invite more sympathy? Does realism leaves us cold, implying that we don’t really want to read about ourselves? Maybe the voice is more pessimistic in Mantel’s book. But I’m quite sure that Cromwell was every bit as confident and driven as Sulla. Mantel doesn’t suggest anything different, though admittedly the tone of her books is darker. Could the more active narrative style in the Roman series invite participation? As I’ve noted earlier, Mantel’s Cromwell speaks to us sotto voce, in asides, almost offstage. The scandal and the action happen at a distance. This must be a conscious effect. Mantel wants us to live inside the sense of doom that she imagines to pervade Henry’s court in the 1530s. Certainly, any rational counsellor to the king must have felt the edge of the axe tickling his neck in the dark of night. But I wonder. Life is more colourful than that, no matter how radical the risks. I’m inclined to think our ennui is greyer than Cromwell’s fear.

In any case, I have no answers, but I do find the comparison fascinating.

Travelogue 998 – August 9
The Present Perfect
Part Nine

It seems fitting that I came back to Hilary Mantel after a several-month detour through the thousand pages of Colleen McCullough’s first volume in the ‘Masters of Rome’ series. McCullough’s style is something of a blunt instrument next to Mantel’s subtlety. Despite my doubts during the first pages, the book proved hard to put down, and, by the time I finished it, I was a big fan. I can’t say my original doubts were proven wrong; I was simply won over by the enthusiasm of the project.

The book is about Marius, first man in Rome, consul seven times, military man for the ages, and reformer of the Roman army and state. The book reviews the ten years or so of his pre-eminence, around 110-100 BC. There’s little subtlety in any of the characterisations. Marius is noble and brilliant. Sulla is depraved and brilliant. There’s no room, even in a thousand pages, for nuanced character in this book.

It makes me question whether they are always necessary, these fine etchings of complex personalities in historical fiction. I stress the ‘always’ in my statement. They are fun, sometimes necessary. We benefit from an alternate read of characters who, at a distance, seem fairly monotone, and from alternate reads of events that, at a distance, seem inevitable. The latter pertains especially to the English Reformation, Mantel’s era, the course of which turned one way and then another according to the most capricious winds. Events could easily have turned out very differently.

That said, does deep psychology sustain a lengthy historical narrative? Can any epic gain traction with wheels warped for realism? Aren’t thought experiments in complex characterizations in history better suited for short pieces? Positing that Julius Caesar was bipolar, let’s say, or that Thomas Cromwell was a mensch really only requires a scene or two to pose the question and offer a few proofs. Seeing Caesar all the way through Gaul and Egypt with one or another chemical imbalance would be excessive. Epic can turn on the axis of a classical tragic flaw, like Achilles’s pride, but it stumbles over psychoanalysis.

Classical tragedy is essentially what McCullough attempts. Marius and Sulla are ambitious, and both of them find their paths to power blocked. Marius has had a modest career already in war and in politics, fighting in Spain and serving as tribune, amassing a fortune, but, according to McCullough, has risen to his ceiling as a ‘new man’, an Italian but not a Roman born. His ambition will brook no opposition, though, especially after prophecy promises him seven consulships. The character sketch here is simple. Marius is capable and proud. He advances upon his fate with calm confidence.

Sulla comes from an ancient patrician family, but he has no fortune. He grows up poor, and he grows up among a debauched class of dancers and theatre types, even singing and writing bawdy plays himself. The character sketch here is simple. McCullough’s Sulla is coldly brilliant, calculating and amoral. He is driven to gain the status in the Senate and in society that he believes is due him, and he is not above murder to attain the financial resources that are required. Once he has achieved his proper place, he deliberately reshapes himself to become a model of Roman leadership, and he pursues his dream of dominance. He advances upon his fate with calm confidence.

Travelogue 997 – August 1
The Present Perfect

Part Eight

There’s an episode about halfway through “The Mirror & the Light” in which Cromwell joins a meeting between King Henry and some French merchants who are showcasing their wares for the monarch. The purpose of the scene is to highlight Henry’s frivolousness and Cromwell’s good sense. Henry is titillated by the sumptuous clothing. He has his guard down. Cromwell assumes that one or all of the merchants are spies. Other courtiers are looking to Cromwell to break up this awkward gathering. This he has to do with no appearance of interference and without exciting the king’s ire. He smoothly manages to do so, awakening the king’s healthy scepticism. Together, they playfully feed the French merchants some misinformation to scare their king, and Cromwell shoos them out of the king’s presence. Outside the king’s chambers, he haggles with them for a far better deal than the king was ever going to achieve. It’s a fun bit, a subtle farce to show up Cromwell’s indispensability.

As fun as the bit is, and successful in its small way, I found it a frustrating reminder of the shortfalls of Mantel’s process in these books. Her close third-person voice is uncompromising. It doesn’t allow us a tourist’s view of the colourful meeting in the king’s chambers. It has to be said that, by this point, hundreds of pages into this third book, we understand the dynamics of the court and we have a good feeling for the king’s and Cromwell’s relationship. The scene has value, but the variety it endeavours to bring falls flat because it cannot elbow past that ruthless narrative perspective.

The fact is the French merchants are the most interesting figures in the scene. We want more: what are they wearing, how do they act, what are their mannerisms, how do they speak? We get nothing because, of course, for Cromwell this is a regular occurrence, and it would be out of character for him to suddenly be reciting for his own edification the merchants’ items of clothing or their courtly bows, commenting on their accents or their moustaches. What he does note is their flattery and their not-so-subtle probing for military information. It makes perfect sense, given the iron-clad rules of perspective, but this reader regrets the missed opportunity.

Mantel’s books are beautiful in their own merit. If I criticize, I only do it in the context of my question, what is historical fiction? There is no perfect formula. Mantel made her authorial choices in favour of creating a common experience of humanity. Other approaches focus on the more alien aspects of our past, the element of difference. Mantel chose a narrative method to bring her character alive for us. It serves that function well, while inhibiting some of the other pleasures we expect from historical fiction. How does one achieve the best balance?