0 The Flying Draper - Ronald Fraser

Out of all the books I'm reading for Reading Presently, this is the one I should have read before now... Tanya very kindly sent me The Flying Draper (1924) by Ronald Fraser, as she correctly thought it would be useful for my research (I'd actually requested a copy to the Bodleian library, and hadn't had time to read it there) - but somehow I have only just read it.  So it's going in the footnotes of my thesis...

Before I get any further - compiling my list of sketches from year six made me keen to include more in future.  Often I just can't think of anything to draw, so I came up with the idea of drawing punning cover illustrations, for how the book might look if the title were a little different... So, instead of The Flying Draper...

Ahahahaha... ;) As for the novel itself, the title does indeed give the game away.  For my research into middlebrow fantastic novels, Ronald Fraser provided a useful example which I hadn't found elsewhere: the flying man.  My only previous experience with Fraser had been a novel I did use in a chapter on metamorphosis, called Flower Phantoms - it wasn't hugely encouraging (which might account for the delay in reading The Flying Draper) since, although the idea of a woman turning into a flower was interesting, the novel itself was written in an equally flowery way.  Lots of swirling, whirling metaphors that ended up being so convoluted that they meant nothing at all, and all rather wearying to read.

The Flying Draper is much better; I thought maybe Fraser had developed his craft, until I discovered that it was actually written a few years before Flower Phantoms.  The narrator is aristocratic Sir Philip, who is rather a thin character of British decency, observing his energetic fiancée Lydia become absorbed in the life of another man - that man being Arthur Codling, the eponymous draper.  His flying happens rather matter-of-factly - the narrator and Lydia are a little surprised, but he doesn't seem to be, when he flies off a cliff and into the sea, where he bobs around for a bit until he comes out.

The draper is a great character.  He is rather detached from everyday life and manners, observing the world around him wryly, being wittily offhand while selling fabrics, and having the potential to be a brilliant eccentric in the same mould as Miss Hargreaves.  But he never becomes quite developed.  His flying takes over from the establishment of a promising character, and oddly diminishes him as a force on the page.  Similarly, Fraser never seems quite sure how to develop the story, once he has thought about it.  There is an intriguing plotline about politics being disrupted and disturbed by Codling flying, and a branch of parliament and a branch of the church wanting to have him expelled or locked up or killed.  But then Fraser suddenly introduces a heap of young, bohemian characters who don't seem to add much at all to the book.

It all gets a bit lost and winding at that point, which is a real shame - the flying draper was an interesting idea, and Fraser had lots of other ideas to follow it up - but he just shoved them all in, in any order, and hoped for the best.

And the style?  Well, some of it is still rather over the top, mistaking exotic and curious imagery for fine writing - such as the following...

"Codling has just published a book," he said. "I read all I could of it last night. A sort of account of his doings during the three years of his absence from England. The finest book, I think, that was ever written; so cold, so calm, so clear, like an April evening; and, pervading it, hints of a passion, huge and heedless and flowering, like the passion of our earth, Philip, in spring. He has felt passion, that man. When he writes of love you smell blossom and you see daisies spring up in the carpet. He knows more of love than is in the brains and hearts of most men to understand. And that is just the trouble. He handles his themes, and especially that theme, so primitively and so coldly, Philip, that it will be death and perdition to the sentimental, who preponderate. For most people his philosophy will be like a lump of ice in the small of the back."

...but Fraser shows a talent for amusing secondary characters, such as Codling's landlady, which I'd have liked to see much more of:

"What I call a near-actress," she answered. "Dances a lot and doesn't say much. And a very pleasant young woman she is, and I don't think I ever saw anyone so pretty in my life, Sir Philip. Blue-eyed and babyish, though very grown-up, hif you know what I mean. Hair like tow with a shine on it, and every bit her own, believe me or not. And a stink of powder like a Turkish harem. I did her up one night, Sir Philip, and the smell of powder and scent nearly knocked me down. But what she wore underneath! You never saw anything so flimsy. It's my believe you could undress her with one motion of the 'and, which no doubt she finds convenient, though I will say that she strikes me as being quiet for a hactress."

Some people have a hatred of comic working-class characters in novels (I remember reading that Angela Carter hated them), but I love affectionate spoofs of middle-class and upper-class characters, and it would be silly of me to make an exception for Cockney landladies.

So, all in all, The Flying Draper certainly has its moments, and is an enjoyable enough read (and useful for my thesis, thanks Tanya!) - but, like so many second-rate writers (for Fraser, sadly, is that) the narrative lacks coherence and the promise of ideas is ultimately not matched by their execution.  The Drying Flapper, on the other hand, I would love to read.

Detail: The Flying Draper - Ronald Fraser

0 Skylark

43. Skylark - Dezső Kosztolányi

I've been reading some pretty brilliant books recently, and not finding time to write about them, so prepare yourselves for some enthusiastic reviews coming up soon.  And let's start the ball rolling with Skylark (1924) by Hungarian novelist Dezső Kosztolányi, translated into English by Richard Aczel, and a heartfelt köszönöm to him for doing so.  It's gone on my list of 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.

Skylark came to my attention when Claire/Captive Reader put it in her Top Ten Books of 2011.  I added it to my Amazon wishlist, and waited... it felt, for some reason, like the sort of book which should really come as a gift.  Lucky for me, Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife spotted it there, and it arrived in my Christmas stocking last year.  So, consider this a tick on the list for my Reading Presently project (where I'm intending to read, in 2013, 50 books which were gifts.)

Before I get on to the wonderful writing and moving story in Skylark, I have to talk about the book itself.  If I'm ever asked why I don't want a Kindle, my one word reply will now be: "Skylark".  This NYRB edition is quite stunningly beautiful - not just the lovely colours and image on the front, and that turquoise/mint green I love so much on the spine, but the feel, the flip-flop of the pages, the perfect flexibility-to-sturdiness of the cover... the physical book is a work of art here, and I am so pleased that the content matched up.

The novel starts as a not-quite-young-any-more woman called Skylark leaves her provincial town for a week, to stay with relatives.  Actually, it starts while her parents are packing for her departure:

The dining-room sofa was strewn with strands of red, white and green cord, clippings of packing twine, shreds of wrapping paper and the scattered, crumpled pages of the local daily, the same fat letters at the top of each page: Sárszeg Gazette, 1899. 

The stage is set for the importance of the home - and the way that it is subverted and disturbed by Skylark's departure.

One might expect (I did expect) that a novel which starts with a character getting ready to leave her home will follow that character on her travels.  Particularly so in a novel whose title bears the name of that character.  What Kosztolányi does so cleverly is, instead, focus on the effects of her absence, leaving the reader to bear witness to the unsettled lives of Skylark's father (Ákos) and mother (known simply as Mother or 'the woman' throughout.)

They have a very obviously unhealthy dependency upon their daughter - but, at the same time, long more than anything for her to marry.  A man who has been polite enough to smile at her is built up into a potential - and then a definite - suitor; when he fails to follow up on this non-existent intimation, he becomes a figure for bitter hatred, much to his confusion.  Mother and Father can barely cope with Skylark leaving town for a week, let alone forever, but this is still their aim in life, even while they realise that it is almost impossible.

And why?  Because Skylark is ugly.  Extremely ugly.  Not horrendously disfigured or anything, simply deeply unattractive.  From what we see of her before she leaves, and hear about her, Skylark also seems domestically very capable (if unambitious), unimaginatively kind, practical, and pretty dull.  But her parents, of course, love her dearly.

This narrative is so clever and subtly written.  It is a mixture of quite pathetic inability to manage in their daughter's absence, with a glimpse of what life would like without her.  They eat interesting foods at restaurants and talk to their neighbours; Ákos gets drunk at a local club (which resembles the Freemasons in some fashion), and this leads to the most moving, vital, and brilliant scene of the novel - where all the couple's unspoken fears and thoughts come tumbling out.  Kosztolányi gives the viewpoint of both husband and wife, so we see the scene through two sets of eyes simultaneously.  It is heartbreaking and extraordinary, but it is not the sort of confrontation that 'changes things forever'.  Things cannot really ever, we sense, be changed.

They had given her that name years ago, Skylark, many, many years ago, when she still sang.  Somehow the name had stuck, and she still wore it like an outgrown childhood dress.

That passage is from early in the novel, and I marked it as being the one which suggested to me that I'd be onto something special.  It was also the first sign of something I thought throughout Skylark, which was that Kosztolányi's writing reminded me of Katherine Mansfield's - which is about the highest compliment I can pay to writing.  He has the same delicate touch, and the same way of showing ordinary people stepping outside of their normal routines, even slightly, and finding that everything is changed thereby, however unnoticeable this is to others.  The subtlest shift in the way acts are performed - the way Skylark holds a birdcage; the seasoning Ákos puts on his risotto - are shown by Kosztolányi to hold enormous significance.

Like a short story by Katherine Mansfield, I imagine Skylark would benefit from being read in one sitting.  At 221 pages, it could be done.  I, sadly, seemed to read almost all of it on bus journeys to and from work, and thus the reading experience was too broken up.  I will have to read it again when I have an entire afternoon to spare.

The only part of this edition I didn't much like was the introduction by Péter Esterházy, since it barely spoke of the novel at all.  Apparently he is one of the most significant contemporary Hungarian writers, but I wish he'd written this introduction more as a fan of Skylark, and less as a fan of his own thoughts.

I've been thinking about the style I aim at on Stuck-in-a-Book, and how I want my posts to be a bit amusing - but it's very hard to be funny when I have nothing but praise for a novel.  So instead, I'll finish by saying that I went to a 1970s murder mystery party on Saturday (the one I mentioned I was writing), and somebody said that I looked like a fraudulent spiritualist from an Agatha Christie novel - must have been the floral bandana that did it.  With that image in your mind... go and buy a copy of Skylark; make it this beautiful NYRB Classics edition.

Detail: Skylark