George Orwell wrote this work in 1936 following an investigative tour of several Lancashire and Yorkshire mining centres - villages and towns - still suffering unemployment, dire poverty and the effects of the Great Depression. He set out to research the living conditions of these places following a specific commissioning from Victor Gollancz , the left wing publisher of the day. What we have got as a result of this journey and research is a strong work in Orwell's brilliant clear prose of the conditions of the working coal mine along with aching portrayals of the living conditions of the workers and their families and a personal, clear polemic essay to support this research. The book, then is in two main parts 1) portrayal in brilliant clarity of the lives of real people from observation , involvement and interview backed up by actual data on wages, cost of living etc from the mine records and other records in the local library and 2) a strong and intellectual essay on the state of social and political England - with the first part informing the personal opinion essay of the second part.
The style of the first section is investigative journalism at its very best - the blueprint in fact. Orwell visited miners homes and talked with the families, he went down the coal mines and observed the workers at first hand and presented us with unforgettable descriptions of the way these mines were worked at that time - conditions which I am sure were similar in Australia. He noted the deprivations of the unemployed and the underemployed in those hard time and recorded it clearly and with no nonsense humanity. A most startling fact of the mining occupation was that the miners worked on their knees doing their picking and "filling" because of the low height of the mine roofs . A man could not stand up there. Orwell doesn't dwell sentimentally on this fact - on the contrary his description of the physical strength and ability of the mine worker is discussed with admiration. We learn that these miners were usually of small stature because a taller person such a Orwell himself just could not manage to do the work. He is admiring of the miners lean , strong physiques and their resilience.
Along with this description of working miners Orwell spends time observing the unemployed such as when competing for waste coal called "scrambling for the coal" . He thought this so amazing that he wondered why it had never been filmed. This scrambling involved people going through the slag coming from the mine for any coal left in the delivery train trucks and with others at the bottom of slag heap (including women and children) scrambling again for any left overs after the higher scamblers ,who had first leapt on to the moving trucks as they arrived, had done their sifting. This way the unemployed got their fuel supplies for free.
The system provided unemployment benefits enough to just barely feed a family - in fact families as an unemployed group were better off than single unemployed persons who were the very poorest of all . It is clearly shown however that the families with work were better off in every way than those where the breadwinner, ie male miner , was out of work. All housing was rented - mostly public housing owned by the local authorities . Orwell sets out costs of living from his checking of records including rent and reporting from individual householders on their purchases for the weeks food etc.
Orwells compelling account of these social and working conditions along with the photographs in my complete edition (Secker & Warburg, 1980) presented a strong case of the plight of the mining working class in those very hard times - a classic, absorbingly interesting, journalistic work.
Then you come to the second part of the book - which is a brilliantly argued essay . The honesty of this part reaches out to one . This partly because of the autobiographical approach of the essay which in turn adds to its gravity and some of its prophetic tone.
Orwell uses his own life experiences as "test case pieces " (my comment) to stringently examine the English class system . He applies pithy , economical, descriptive terms like "shabby genteel" and "shadowy cast system" with biting yet empathetic effect in this analysis. For instance, Orwell labels his class as "Upper Middle Class" and shows why this is so by autobiographical reference and detail in order to be able to point out what the other classes are. He is concerned about this separation of the classes but realistic that it has a strong systematic hold on people . He is proposing that people of the different English classes should be striving towards a "Good" socialism in order to deliver a fairer society.
Along with the research of the first part of the book this all underpins his analysis and investigation of the political system and the range of "Isms" occupying the minds of the the political intelligentsia of the time - Socialism, Capitalism, Communism and Fascism . Interestingly he doesn't mention "Democratic Socialism" - too historically early for that term I think. However it is possible to posit that in his overall argument outlining the need for "good socialism " - he is in effect describing a type of "democratic socialism".
In arguing this way I get the message that Orwell is working hard to show his fellow countrymen that they need to face up to the dangers of fascism in its guises - "National" and"Communist" by striving for the fairer society which good, real socialism can bring. Fascism then is the real demon which horrified him.
Interestingly, Victor Gollancz , was uncertain about the essay because he thought Orwell was too hard on the middle class , socialists of his day - Keatings "Basketweavers" and that it might anger the regular Left Book Club readers but printed it as is nevertheless. The rest is literary history. And on that note I should mention the social history inbuilt throughout this 100 page essay is stunning.
I haven't done this brilliant essay justice but I recommend it highly for the joy of its intellectual strength and the pleasure of reading one of the best essayists in the English cannon at his finest.
Two final comments - there apparently was no "Wigan Pier as such at that time - it was a local joke. (Orwell himself even tried to find the "Pier"at one time).
Second - the final long paragraph is a neat Orwellian summary and witty predictive 1936 comment which I will quote a little of in the hope you will be tempted to read the whole thing.
"In the next few years we shall either get that effective Socialistic party that we need, …. if not Fascism is coming …..
And when the widely separate classes who, necessarily, would form any real Socialist party have fought side by side … perhaps the misery of class-prejudice will fade away …. and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but out aitches."
Faye Lawrence
"Treasure Island' by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island is probably one of the best known novels in English, more famous than any of the works of many authors with a far greater literary reputation, such as George Eliot or Henry James. According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th edn) its 'impact on the popular image of pirates (one-legged rogues, with parrots on their shoulders, in search of buried treasure) has been huge'.
Yet Treasure Island is a book for children, and was intended as such by its author. It first appeared in parts, between July 1882 and June 1883, in a periodical called Young Folks. It could more accurately be described as a book for boys: apart from the mother of the young hero there are no female roles whatsoever, and she disappears early from the action. This action, in England or on the mysterious island where most of the novel is set, takes place entirely among males, with young Jim Hawkins, the narrator for most of the story, providing the protagonist with whom boy readers can identify.
The absence of sex is total, but the world described is an often brutal adult one. There is an extraordinary number of violent deaths in the novel, though they are mainly of pirates on whom little sympathy need be wasted, and the treatement of the violence is somewhat sanitised. Drunkedness and its consequences also figure prominently. The novel confronts some harsh realities, notably treachery, despite the inherently romantic motif of a search for hidden treasure with the aid of a fortuitously discovered map.
The novel is set in the second half of the eighteenth century, and one of its great achievements is the success with which its world is evoked. Young readers are not bored with long passages of description, but the environments of the sailing ship and of the island come vividly before us. (This reader did find himself consulting a dictionary for some of the sailing terminology, but in the 1880s it probably posed fewer problems.) It was interesting to note that the island is not the tropic cay of modern pirate movies: its vegetation is more temperate, and it is a hotbed of disease, perhaps a metaphor for the effect of the treasure on many (though not all) who go in search of it.
Treasure Island is memorable for its characters, particularly, of course, the one-legged Long John Silver with his parrot Captain Flint on his shoulder. But many other minor figures like the blind Pew and Israel Hands, also come vividly, if briefly, to life. Among the more admirable figures one remembers the good-hearted but impulsive and indiscreet Squire Twelawney, and the much more judicious Dr Livesey, whose dedication to his profession causes him to treat even pirates dedicated to his destruction.
The novel has its 'good guys' and 'bad guys', but the picture presents some interesting modifications. Long John Silver is thorougly black-hearted, but he is also intelligent, often charming, and perhaps not incapable of a measure of decency. In the penultimate chapter of the novel Jim says that he 'has at last gone clean out of my life', but speculates without rancour that he 'still lives in comfort somewhere'. The reader whom he has entertained probably wishes him no less.
Jim Hawkins himself is in many respects the archetypal plucky young hero. But he is capable of acting irresponsibly, notably when he sneaks away from the besieged camp on what appears to be a rather hare-brained scheme to set the ship adrift. Dr Livesey and the ship's captain do not seem ever entirely to forgive him, and one does wonder if Jim considered whether his plan to maroon the pirates would not also have had the effect of marooning his friends. Stevenson does not dwell on the matter.
There are more profound novels than Treasure Island. But one does not have to be a boy to find it an unflagging source of enjoyment and pleasure.
Yet Treasure Island is a book for children, and was intended as such by its author. It first appeared in parts, between July 1882 and June 1883, in a periodical called Young Folks. It could more accurately be described as a book for boys: apart from the mother of the young hero there are no female roles whatsoever, and she disappears early from the action. This action, in England or on the mysterious island where most of the novel is set, takes place entirely among males, with young Jim Hawkins, the narrator for most of the story, providing the protagonist with whom boy readers can identify.
The absence of sex is total, but the world described is an often brutal adult one. There is an extraordinary number of violent deaths in the novel, though they are mainly of pirates on whom little sympathy need be wasted, and the treatement of the violence is somewhat sanitised. Drunkedness and its consequences also figure prominently. The novel confronts some harsh realities, notably treachery, despite the inherently romantic motif of a search for hidden treasure with the aid of a fortuitously discovered map.
The novel is set in the second half of the eighteenth century, and one of its great achievements is the success with which its world is evoked. Young readers are not bored with long passages of description, but the environments of the sailing ship and of the island come vividly before us. (This reader did find himself consulting a dictionary for some of the sailing terminology, but in the 1880s it probably posed fewer problems.) It was interesting to note that the island is not the tropic cay of modern pirate movies: its vegetation is more temperate, and it is a hotbed of disease, perhaps a metaphor for the effect of the treasure on many (though not all) who go in search of it.
Treasure Island is memorable for its characters, particularly, of course, the one-legged Long John Silver with his parrot Captain Flint on his shoulder. But many other minor figures like the blind Pew and Israel Hands, also come vividly, if briefly, to life. Among the more admirable figures one remembers the good-hearted but impulsive and indiscreet Squire Twelawney, and the much more judicious Dr Livesey, whose dedication to his profession causes him to treat even pirates dedicated to his destruction.
The novel has its 'good guys' and 'bad guys', but the picture presents some interesting modifications. Long John Silver is thorougly black-hearted, but he is also intelligent, often charming, and perhaps not incapable of a measure of decency. In the penultimate chapter of the novel Jim says that he 'has at last gone clean out of my life', but speculates without rancour that he 'still lives in comfort somewhere'. The reader whom he has entertained probably wishes him no less.
Jim Hawkins himself is in many respects the archetypal plucky young hero. But he is capable of acting irresponsibly, notably when he sneaks away from the besieged camp on what appears to be a rather hare-brained scheme to set the ship adrift. Dr Livesey and the ship's captain do not seem ever entirely to forgive him, and one does wonder if Jim considered whether his plan to maroon the pirates would not also have had the effect of marooning his friends. Stevenson does not dwell on the matter.
There are more profound novels than Treasure Island. But one does not have to be a boy to find it an unflagging source of enjoyment and pleasure.
"Canada" by Richard Ford
Richard Ford has a well deserved reputation as being one of the major American writers today. I have found his writing lyrically poetical as well as earthy and grounded in the lives of relatively ordinary people - powerfully evoking a culture and the American landscape . I was intrigued therefore to read his latest work called , Canada, and to try to understand his purpose in this case. However one does learn, I think, that this work is about America and being American also . I will now turn to the book and look at some elements of the plot, style, characterisations and apparent purpose.
From the beginning Canada displays elements of an unusual action story. The narrator, Dell Parsons, introduces the reader to his family in the first chapter. He tells us right at the beginning that his parents committed a bank robbery in the Montana region in the the nineteen sixties . This sets himself and his twin sister when they were just fifteen, on a strange life course. The intriguingly narrated story gives plenty of evidence of why this has been the case. For example, Dell warns us in the very first paragraph that he is going to tell us about some murders later thus producing an element of suspense for the reader. The first section of the book (almost half) is about the four members of the family and the circumstances leading up to the parents arrest for the robbery . Following the arrest and gaoling of his parents , Dell is whisked away to Canada by a well-meaning friend of the family in order to keep him from child care authorities in Montana. His twin sister Bernie runs away from home herself to California.
The second part of the book centres on Dell's life in the few years after his escape to Canada to a frontier-like town in Saskatchewan . He is left there at fifteen in the "care" of a hotel owner - a relative of the female family friend who has taken him there from Montana. We learn later she has done this at the request of Dell's mother who is now serving a long gaol sentence. Dell's consequent and sometimes dangerous adventures which find him observing a range of remarkable characters and situations, forms most of the rest of the book. Dell is looking back narrating the story of his past as a contentedly married school teacher in his sixties and as a Canadian citizen. We find that Dell's aim - to live quietly and learn is achieved after he settles in Canada assisted by another benefactor . Throughout all of this , we cant help noting , he is the perfect observer . Dell is telling his story as a now settled sixty year old looking back on these early adventurous years . Overall this is an amazing plot with elements of rite of passage but the strength of the book is with the writing itself.
Ford is above all else a fine writer and observer of humanity. His has the ability to convey vivid word pictures and the flavour of the environment of the story - both human and natural. He achieves this in Canada as he does in his other many works including the Bascombe trilogy, however for me the narration style in this book doesnt work as well as in other works by Ford. I am not sure why- maybe it was just the tone.
On the characterisations in Canada I have no misgivings - they are observed and described to perfection especially Dell's family. I thought the voice in this the first half of the book was the clearest and I found special enjoyment in the young, kind and keen observances of the parents as they jockey around each when planning to undertake the desperate robbery.
One question that kept coming before me with my reading of Canada was about the purpose of this particular story. I dont think it is to tell us about the qualities of Canada as such - only in that it brings out the sense which Americans may have of the safety net on the continent for a country very like their own in many ways and so very close by - something like we might think of New Zealand and like which NZers might think of Australia. It is definitely about memory - perhaps a memory which is a little too good and not quite fallible enough is part of the little problem I have with the story. And possibly there is just too much adventure clouding the observations a bit. Overall I found it a reasonably good read by a superior writer (one of the very best in my view) but not as effective in conveying the essence of being American as in other works of his such as The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land - these three making up the wonderful Bascombe trilogy which I strongly recommend.
I would be grateful to hear of any other views - including those which may contradict mine.
Faye
From the beginning Canada displays elements of an unusual action story. The narrator, Dell Parsons, introduces the reader to his family in the first chapter. He tells us right at the beginning that his parents committed a bank robbery in the Montana region in the the nineteen sixties . This sets himself and his twin sister when they were just fifteen, on a strange life course. The intriguingly narrated story gives plenty of evidence of why this has been the case. For example, Dell warns us in the very first paragraph that he is going to tell us about some murders later thus producing an element of suspense for the reader. The first section of the book (almost half) is about the four members of the family and the circumstances leading up to the parents arrest for the robbery . Following the arrest and gaoling of his parents , Dell is whisked away to Canada by a well-meaning friend of the family in order to keep him from child care authorities in Montana. His twin sister Bernie runs away from home herself to California.
The second part of the book centres on Dell's life in the few years after his escape to Canada to a frontier-like town in Saskatchewan . He is left there at fifteen in the "care" of a hotel owner - a relative of the female family friend who has taken him there from Montana. We learn later she has done this at the request of Dell's mother who is now serving a long gaol sentence. Dell's consequent and sometimes dangerous adventures which find him observing a range of remarkable characters and situations, forms most of the rest of the book. Dell is looking back narrating the story of his past as a contentedly married school teacher in his sixties and as a Canadian citizen. We find that Dell's aim - to live quietly and learn is achieved after he settles in Canada assisted by another benefactor . Throughout all of this , we cant help noting , he is the perfect observer . Dell is telling his story as a now settled sixty year old looking back on these early adventurous years . Overall this is an amazing plot with elements of rite of passage but the strength of the book is with the writing itself.
Ford is above all else a fine writer and observer of humanity. His has the ability to convey vivid word pictures and the flavour of the environment of the story - both human and natural. He achieves this in Canada as he does in his other many works including the Bascombe trilogy, however for me the narration style in this book doesnt work as well as in other works by Ford. I am not sure why- maybe it was just the tone.
On the characterisations in Canada I have no misgivings - they are observed and described to perfection especially Dell's family. I thought the voice in this the first half of the book was the clearest and I found special enjoyment in the young, kind and keen observances of the parents as they jockey around each when planning to undertake the desperate robbery.
One question that kept coming before me with my reading of Canada was about the purpose of this particular story. I dont think it is to tell us about the qualities of Canada as such - only in that it brings out the sense which Americans may have of the safety net on the continent for a country very like their own in many ways and so very close by - something like we might think of New Zealand and like which NZers might think of Australia. It is definitely about memory - perhaps a memory which is a little too good and not quite fallible enough is part of the little problem I have with the story. And possibly there is just too much adventure clouding the observations a bit. Overall I found it a reasonably good read by a superior writer (one of the very best in my view) but not as effective in conveying the essence of being American as in other works of his such as The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land - these three making up the wonderful Bascombe trilogy which I strongly recommend.
I would be grateful to hear of any other views - including those which may contradict mine.
Faye
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