People are rarely content in English novels of the last century – except, it seems, when pigs are involved
Last week, a respected colleague posed a casual question that, on further reflection, opened up an interesting line of speculation. Could I, he asked, recommend for a Finnish friend some 20th-century English books expressive of happiness?
Later, my co-worker sent me his friend's email. Here it is, unedited: "Any recommendations on literature: novels from the 20th century and onwards, discussing happiness, perhaps exposing traditional views of happiness to show something more unconventional, and might portray how the idea has shifted in contemporary times?"
Happiness. It's not – at face value – a likely theme for the novelist. The late Laurie Colwin, still sorely missed, published a novel whose ironic title, Happy All the Time, simply begged the question; Tolstoy, you may recall, declared at the beginning of Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
So where, in the books of the 20th century, might you look for happiness? It's not obvious. Possibly in children's literature – some lyrical passages in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, or some boating episodes in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series – and possibly in romantic comedy.
In truth, happiness as a theme is an elusive concept. Another place to start might be the innocent world of PG Wodehouse. Even there, however, we find that the landscape of Bertie Wooster's Mayfair is fraught with hazard (aunts) and jeopardy (ex-fiancees). Bertie might be a nincompoop and an innocent (one of very few in English literature), but he is always mired in one kind of scrape or another, and relies on his manservant, Jeeves, to rescue him from "the bouillon".
However, if we relocate to the English countryside and the Shires, we can find happiness in parts of The Hobbit (some of it to do with excessive feasting and drinking), and also a more adult kind of contentment in Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, the ancestral home of that dreamy peer, Clarence Threepwood, ninth earl of Emsworth.
He, too, has his share of troubles (his sister, Constance; the Scots gardener McAllister). There is, in fact, only one infallible source of joy in his life. And that – appropriately for this spring bank holiday – is his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings.
So there, perhaps, is the answer: literary happiness is to be found in a fictional pig. (AA Milne might say "Piglet"). Some American readers could echo this suggestion with reference to Walter R Brooks's Freddy the Pig series.
It's not an infallible rule. Not every kind of pig, of course, guarantees happiness – especially not those who live on Animal Farm.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
0 comments:
Post a Comment