The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, 1898

I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it."

"For sheer terror?" I remember asking.

He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!"

"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women.

He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain."

"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." ---- (page 4)

Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898), like many classics of apprehension and horror, relies on uncertainty and shadowy, mysterious occurrences to wind up the story's tension and suspense. The novella begins as a fairly straightforward Victorian ghost story, following familiar patterns (the uneasy young governess, the mysterious old mansion in the country, the hushed-up family secrets) to the point of being a pastiche. The main narrative is even framed by a prologue in which the story is read aloud at a Christmas gathering devoted to the telling of horror stories. Although the first sighting of a ghost certainly takes the protagonist by surprise, the reader knows exactly what to expect. James has lured his audience into a certain level comfort and complacency; at first, the story's suspense comes not from the question of whether a supernatural threat will be revealed, but when it will be revealed.

As the tale progresses, however, it becomes increasingly clear that it is no simplistic bump-in-the-night horror story. The governess at first appears to be merely a sensitive, slightly daffy young woman with a strong sense of drama, but as time passes, her narration becomes dense, claustrophobic, paranoid, almost breathless in its sense of rising terror. The central question of the novella only emerges towards the end: is the governess simply insane, is she truly seeing the ghosts or is she perhaps the one terrorizing the children herself?

James offers no obvious answers; the conclusion of the novella is entirely ambiguous. Miles, the small boy in the governess's care, dies in the very last sentence, after a conversation that the governess sees as a battle between herself and Peter Quint for possession of his soul. The governess seems to attribute Miles's death to Quint's influence leaving his body, but it's an entirely subjective analysis. Likewise, Miles seems to finally see Quint's ghost at the end of the story, but again, this is just the governess's reading of the situation. Nearly all of the novella's text is the protagonist's own narration of the story; only a small fraction is dialogue, and the dialogue that is related can be interpreted in any number of ways, assuming that the governess's point-of-view is unreliable. Depending on which way you read it, Miles's words could be those of an innocent, carefree little boy, or thinly disguised threats from a malicious fiend. Either version fits in perfectly with the evidence presented in the text.
 

Another example of James's refusal to spell anything out is the novella's constant sexual references, innuendo and insinuations, none of which are explicitly stated. The thinly veiled references to Quint and Jessel's inappropriate relationship, the governess's embarrassing and unrequited crush on her new employer, the sinister hints about Miles's behavior at school and, worst of all, the possibility that one or both of the children were sexually molested by one or both of the ghosts. The atmosphere of unhealthy, perhaps perverted sexuality permeates the story, and yet the theme is so cloaked in Victorian manners that it's almost possible to imagine that it's not there. But it is, and James perhaps intended the work to be a bit of a satire of the sexual repression of the age. Would the governess have been able to more effectively deal with the situation if she had been able to admit to herself that there was a sexual element? Could her own repressed attitude towards sex (shown by her unwillingness to openly acknowledge her attraction to her employer) be playing some role in the events—for instance, could her belief that the children's innocence is being destroyed be some commentary on her own view of sexuality? There are even some subtle suggestions that it is she, not the ghosts, who is corrupting and terrorizing the children, possibly in a sexual way.

The actual text of the novella offers no solid answer to any of these questions; what makes the tale frightening is the uncertainty, which James has no intention of clearing up, even at the climax. Both readings of the story (that the governess is crazy, or that she's right and no one believes her) are horrifying in their own way, which is what makes it effective. Whichever side you take—and readers have been taking sides since the novella was published—the end result is unsettling and sinister.
 

Personally, I think the governess truly is seeing ghosts, and that they do have some sort of hold over the children. Her narration and interpretation of events is, of course, entirely unreliable, but there are several solid pieces of evidence that she is truly seeing something supernatural. For instance, she is able to perfectly describe Peter Quint to Mrs. Grose without having any way to know what he looks like. Douglas, the guest in the prologue who reads the story, seems genuinely disturbed by it, and describes the governess affectionately (perhaps because he is in love with her), which isn't something he would likely do if he thought she was insane. And to me, the idea of a normal, albeit quirky, woman being driven crazy by something no one else will acknowledge is even more insidiously frightening than if the governess was simply psychotic.

The point of the story, of course, is that we are entirely dependent on the governess's deeply subjective version of events. In her own eyes, she is a hero, selflessly protecting the children from the hellish influence of unnatural spirits. James gives us no other window into the situation, no other point of view to see the story from. It seems that the question of whether the governess is good or evil or either is up to the reader to determine. That uncertainty is the core of what makes the story frightening. To be honest, I found analyzing the novella after the fact more interesting than reading it. The dense, gimmicky prose is a bit boring after a while. This is one classic that, in my opinion, is more interesting to discuss and consider that it is to read.

NEXT UP: One of the hottest books of the fall, J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, 1945

Evelyn Waugh holds a rather odd place in the literary world. He is not a household name like Dickens, Austen, Kipling or Orwell, but nor is he exactly obscure. He's one of those writers who are probably popular with college professors and obsessive Anglophiles, but largely unknown to the general reading public. Until I read Brideshead Revisited, I had heard his name in passing, but didn't know much about who he was or what he wrote.

I was expecting either a comedy-of-manners pre-WWII romance or a slightly grittier story of the war itself. I was surprised to find such a dense, rich narrative, an eclectic, surprisingly dark story, infused with shots of buoyant wit and characters that are both eccentrically Dickensian and three-dimensional.

The prologue shows us a middle-aged Charles Ryder, a former artist turned captain in the army during the heart of the war. Leading his men on a training exercise in the English countryside, he accidentally stumbles over the estate of Brideshead, a place that triggers memories of his life, beginning with his college days. At college, he becomes fast friends with Sebastian Flyte, the quirky son of the disgraced lord of Brideshead. As the years wear on, Ryder finds himself more and more entwined with Brideshead and the strange, fractured Flyte family whose severe Catholicism represents either eternal salvation or lifelong torment for them all.

Brideshead is a book that was made to be savored, considered, experienced slowly. Waugh proceeds at his own pace, allowing the characters to develop over time. His style is fascinating, and liable to change at any minute. Some of his prose is luxuriously descriptive (and few authors that I've read can spin out a metaphor as well or as long as Waugh can) and some of it is fast, witty and sharp as a whip. Waugh is truly very funny, when he chooses to be. A lengthy sequence in which Ryder visits his highly eccentric father, who passive-aggressively attempts to make the visit as unpleasant as possible for his son, is a glorious piece of comedy that, in the grand tradition of English picaresque novels, is utterly unrelated to the plot:

It was a gruesome evening, and I was astonished to find, when at last the party broke up, that it was only a few minutes after eleven. My father helped himself to a glass of barley-water and said: "What dull friends I have! You know, without the spur of your presence I should never have roused myself to invite them. I have been very negligent about entertaining lately. Now that you are paying me such a long visit, I will have many such evenings. You liked Miss Gloria Orme-Herrick?"

"No."

"No? Was it her little moustache you objected to or her very large feet? Do you think she enjoyed herself?"

"No."

"That was my impression also. I doubt if any of our guests will count this as one of their happiest evenings. That young foreigner played atrociously, I thought. Where can I have met him? And Miss Constantia Smethwick--where can I have met her? But the obligations of hospitality must be observed. As long as you are here, you shall not be dull."

Strife was internecine during the next fortnight, but I suffered the more, for my father had greater reserves to draw on and a wider territory for manoeuvre, while I was pinned to my bridgehead between the uplands and the sea. He never declared his war aims, and I do not to this day know whether they were purely punitive-- whether he had really at the back of his mind some geopolitical idea of getting me out of the country, as Aunt Philippa had been driven to Bordighera and my cousin Melchior to Darwin, or whether, as seems most likely, he fought for the sheer love of a battle, in which indeed he shone.---(pages 71-72)

Despite some highly funny passages, Brideshead is definitely not a comic novel. It's really more of a Shakespearean tragedy, the story of the Marchmains and their crumbling faith, as well as Charles Ryder and his complete lack of any. Waugh, a devout Catholic, makes the interesting choice of making his main character a staunch agnostic. The rituals and beliefs of Catholicism are seen through Ryder's skeptical, cynical eyes; only at the end of the novel does he begin to find glimmers of true spirituality.

Waugh's agenda is obviously pro-Catholic, but he employs subtlety to mask it. He's not preachy and forceful; he allows his story to suggest his own morals and beliefs, rather than just coming out and saying it. Really, the novel could be read two ways: the Catholic religion is either the only way to find true happiness and salvation, or it's the surest way to encounter guilt, misery and emptiness. Powerful stuff, and thought-provokingly handled, too. The ability to weave this sort of a motif into a story and still have a story is rare.

Waugh's characters continually surprise with their complexity, particularly Ryder, who begins the novel as the standard, detached narrator of English fiction, and ends it as the book's true central character. The other main character is the Marchmain family, who can be viewed as a single, multi-faceted entity. Each member is a piece of the puzzle. I find Brideshead's detached quirkiness and Sebastian's bizarre mixture of childlike innocence and cynicism to be particularly fascinating.

Brideshead Revisited is a meaty piece of literature, gorgeously written, as well as moving and somewhat profound. It's also highly readable, thank goodness, one of those books that can be studied and appreciated or simply enjoyed. The questions it poses are serious and weighty, but Waugh presents these questions with the finesse of a superior craftsman. He tells an excellent story, too.

NEXT UP: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880

I'm not going to lie: the experience of reading The Brothers Karamazov is not fun for anyone who isn't a masochist. Getting through TBK is sort of like trying to kill an angry bull with a soup spoon. It's long, messy and tiring, but it's also a huge accomplishment. Although killing an angry bull with a soup spoon would probably be exciting, so my analogy is far from perfect.

Dostoevsky's two most prominent novels--Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov--have always been held up as the "best of the best" by hoity-toity literary types. If nothing else, Dostoevsky had the ability to be a masterful philosopher, and there's a great deal of intriguing philosophy and religion in his work.

What Dostoevsky is not is a great storyteller. The Brothers Karamazov is, in my edition, 700 pages long--in many editions it's over a thousand--and roughly half of that length would have easily told the actual story. The rest is purely extraneous.

What is the actual story? Sometime in the nineteenth century, in a small Russian town, there live three brothers (excited yet?). One of them is emotional and headstrong, another is cold and intellectual, the third is kind and good. The lives and beliefs of Mitya, Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov intertwine after their father is murdered and Mitya is accused of the crime. There's also a tangle of soap-opera subplots that would take pages to unravel, so I'm not even going to go there.

Anyway, the plot isn't the point. If it was, no one would remember what the The Brothers Karamazov is.

The point is the philosophic and religious commentary, which take the form of several essay-like sidebars. Dostoevsky's main questions are the existence of God and the essential goodness or badness of humankind, as well as the interrelationship between the two.

It is these passages in which Dostoevsky shines. His ideas and concepts are genuinely arresting and certainly thought-provoking. Even though Dostoevsky was a profoundly religious man, he presents several extremely strong arguments against religion.

These appear in "The Grand Inquisitor," a particularly celebrated chapter in which Ivan outlines his revolutionary beliefs to the pious Alyosha. The chapter, which is an essay to all intents and purposes, has real energy and some fairly brilliant observations to make. Dostoevsky is better-suited to this kind of writing than to the creation of believable characters or compelling stories:

"Well, I know nothing of it [mankind's ability to love] so far, and can't understand it, and the innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether that's due to men's bad qualities or whether it's inherent in their nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what's more, a man is rarely able to admit another's suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why won't he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me--hunger, for instance,--my benefactor will perhaps allow me; but when you come to higher suffering--for an idea, for instance--he will very rarely admit that, perhaps because my face strikes him as not at all what he fancies a man should have who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favour, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love one's neighbours in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might like looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to the suffering of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we'd better keep to the children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason why I won't speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation--they've eaten the apple and know good and evil and they have become 'like gods.' They go on eating it still. But the children haven't eaten anything, and are so far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another's sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children while they are quite little--up to seven, for instance--are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison, who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends with him. . . . You don't know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head aches and I am sad." --- (Constance Garnett translation, pages 220-221)

Yes, that is in fact one paragraph. And the two chapters in which Ivan lectures Alyosha are full of 'em. This novel is not for the faint of heart.

Dostoevsky's philosophy is truly interesting and surprisingly relevant. "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" represent Ivan's main thesis against the existence of God and the companion chapter, "The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare" is a dreamlike encounter with an evil demon. These chapters have spirit and strength, even though they are all completely irrelevant to the story.

The story itself, however, doesn't have the artfulness of the philosophical chapters. Dostoevsky is a writer of ideas, not of people. His characters, despite their explosive emotions and melodramatic outbursts, are shadows, mere vehicles for theme and message.

The characters of The Brothers Karamazov are unsubtle and shallow and worst of all, they don't feel real. Even after hundreds and hundreds of pages, I feel only the most tenuous of connections with the book's main characters. Alyosha, Ivan and Mitya are not characters in their own right; they perform their roles in the story like mechanical automatons. There's no texture to them, no sense of reality.

And the supporting cast is probably worse. Dostoevsky has yet to write one female character that I find even marginally believable. Katyta and Grushenka, like their male counterparts, are very dull and completely unbelievable, especially in long dialogue scenes (loosely related sidenote: every character in this book speaks like a raving maniac at least once and it's incredibly annoying).

As for the novel's plot, suffice it to say that it lumbers along like a three-legged elephant. Dostoevsky could give Victor Hugo a run for his money as the author of some of the most excruciatingly tedious passages of prose I've read. It wouldn't be so bad if the book wasn't so long, but over and over again, I found myself running out of patience for Dostoevsky's achingly slow pacing.

The story's best moments are when Dostoevsky uses his grasp of psychology to make a philosophical point. Here's one atypically interesting exchange between Alyosha and Lise, a girl who is being consumed by mental illness:

"There are moments when people love crime," said Alyosha thoughtfully.

"Yes, yes. You have uttered my thought, they love crime, every one loves crime, they love it always, not at some 'moments.' You know, it's as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it."

"And are you still reading nasty books?"

"Yes, I am. Mamma reads them and hides them under her pillow and I steal them."

"Aren't you ashamed to destroy yourself?"

"I want to destroy myself. There's a boy here, who laid down between the railway lines when the train was passing. Lucky fellow! Listen, your brother is being tried now for murdering his father and every one loves his having killed his father."

"Loves his having killed his father?"

"Yes, loves it, every one loves it! Everybody says it's so awful, but secretly they simply love it. I for one love it." --- (Constance Garnett translation, page 532)

Unfortunately, Dostoevsky's moments of clarity come rarely. For the most part, The Brothers Karamazov is a novel bogged down with melodrama, with characters who act to further the philosophy and the plot. It's a book that can stun you with a small moment of genius and then leave you bored silly for the next four chapters.

Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky's second-biggest achievement, had many of the same faults, but it also had a tighter, more compelling plot and more psychologically complex characters. The Brothers Karamazov is a strange mix of novel and elongated essay. If nothing else, it is rather fascinating in its strangeness and individuality. It's the sort of book no one actually wants to read, but it's quite the literary test of endurance, and it is rewarding in the end. Dostoevsky may not have been a brilliant writer--at least, not in my opinion--but he had some brilliance in him.

The experience of reading TBK reminds me of the quotation: "I hate writing. I love having written." Likewise, I sometimes hated reading The Brothers Karamazov, but I kind of love having read it.

But thank God it's over.

NEXT UP: A new entry in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, 1837

Of all of Charles Dickens's novels, The Pickwick Papers stands out as his lightest, most comic work. I've always been a great lover of Dickens (1812-1870) and The Pickwick Papers in no way disappoints. It's a masterpiece of English comic literature, and what's more, a sheer delight to read.

The story is loose and simple: Mr. Pickwick is a jolly, light-hearted gentleman who has founded The Pickwick Club, a London men's group. At the beginning of the novel, Pickwick and three friends (romantic Tupman, poetic Snodgrass and cowardly Winkle) set out to roam the countryside, sending back reports of their adventures to the club.

But as the novel progresses, the initial premise is laid by the wayside as the action begins to center less on the four friends and more on Mr. Pickwick and his sharp-witted servant Sam Weller.

Throughout the novel's enormous length, the Pickwickians stumble into a great deal of trouble: lawsuits, carriage crashes, elopements, cons, duels and even jail time for Mr. Pickwick.

Dickens is trying his hardest to entertain, and entertain he does. The book really is laugh-out loud funny, even in 2010. Take this exquisitely worded passage:

"Because, sir," said Mr. Pickwick, considerably excited, "because you are too old, sir [to wear an outlandish bandit costume to a party]."

"Too old!" exclaimed Mr. Tupman.

"And if any further ground of objection be wanting," continued Mr. Pickwick, "you are too fat, sir."

"Sir," said Mr. Tupman, his face suffused with a crimson glow, "this is an insult."

"Sir," replied Mr. Pickwick in the same tone, "it is not half the insult to you that your appearance in my presence in a green velvet jacket with a two-inch tail would be to me." (page 229)

Dickens's comic invention is boundless. Quirky characters and bizarre situations are one of his trademarks, and he's already in fine form here. An especially amusing running joke is Mr. Winkle's incredible incompetence as a sportsman, even though he considers himself a bit of a master.

It's Sam and Tony Weller who are the book's breakout characters, particularly Sam, a sharp-tongued, cool-headed cockney who helps the hapless Pickwick out of many a dilemma. Tony, his father, is also about as colorful a character as anyone could want. The bonds between Sam and Tony and Sam and Pickwick are the novel's center.

Yet despite all the craziness of the novel's supporting characters and incidents, it's the almost saintly figure of Mr. Pickwick that, to me, is Dickens's greatest achievement in the novel. Pickwick is simultaneously larger-than-life and truly human.

A little more than halfway through the book, the comic tone becomes a little more realistic and there's some true darkness when Pickwick finds himself in a debtor's prison. Dickens's sense of drama is always a tad on the melodramatic side, but the prison sequences stand out as particularly well-realized.

One of the few things that I didn't love was that Dickens felt the need to embed seven or eight complete "short stories" in the book. These tales (generally being told to the Pickwickians at a pub or eating-house) are all good, but they take up a lot of space and contribute nothing to the novel's plot.

But Dickens remains the consummate reader's writer. The Pickwick Papers is a truly joyous reading experience. It is not shallow or superficial, nor is it deep and dark. It's a long read, but it's an enjoyable, memorable journey every step of the way.

NEXT UP: Philip Pullman's enormously ambitious three-volume fantasy series His Dark Materials.