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Wednesday 15 July 2020

Catastrophic surprises in store


As a postscript to H P Lovecraft's thoughts last week, and building also on the recent post about good books, I came across this observation by author John Lanchester in the London Review of Books:
“The reader whose idea of the novel is formed by the English canon may at some stage start to read books in the French tradition. At that point, it may suddenly seem that everything one has previously read has essentially been children’s literature. Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, even Austen and Eliot, are all wonderful writers, but their work is founded in wish fulfilment, happy endings and love conquering all. The side notes and off notes and internal dissent are all there, of course, but they are subtextual, subtle, inexplicit. The main current of the English novel is in the direction of Happy Ever After, along the lines of Miss Prism’s deathless observation: ‘The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.’ When you turn from that tradition to the work of Laclos, Flaubert, Balzac, Stendhal, Maupassant and Proust, it’s like getting a glass of ice water in the face. Everybody lies all the time; codes of honour are mainly a delusion and will get you into serious trouble; the same goes for love; if you think the world is how it is described in consoling fictions, you have many catastrophic surprises in store.”
You can read the whole piece here. I think it's interesting because Lanchester makes this comment while talking about Simenon's Maigret books -- genre novels in an extremely long-running series with one central character, which is usually a recipe for absolute junk. And also because the trend he's talking about in English-language literature also went on to infect English-language cinema, television and even roleplaying games. Hence the common assumption these days that roleplaying ought to reinforce comforting fantasies and be built around predictable character arcs. To which I will just add: yuck.

18 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this, Dave ! I never read a "Maigret" and seldom watched TV épisodes (in French, his mot famous personificators were Jean Gabin, Jean Richard and Bruno Crémer). I can just tell that TV reviews pointed out that the reenactment of Paris in the "Maigret"'s with Bean-Atkinson wasn't perfect, confusing the 30s with the 50s :-)

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    1. I've never read a Maigret book myself, Olivier, but Simenon's romans durs are terrific. I especially recommend La Neige était Sale.

      I can well believe TV and movie production designers get historical periods mixed up. An artist friend of mine worked on a movie of Gulliver's Travels and said that the director had no idea what he meant when he asked "Do you want this to look 17th century or 18th century?" It turned out the director's sole understanding of history came from cowboy movies.

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  2. Regarding Hollywood and happy endings versus unhappy endings. I am reminded of Wings of Desire versus City of Angels. Europe makes a beautiful film with a happy ending. Hollywood remakes it and the girl dies. Or, I just watched A Walk on the Moon last night. Diane Lane plays a woman haunted by lost opportunities, “the road not traveled.” And rather than simply exploring regret and temptation, we get to watch Lane’s character screw up her life and the lives of her family (manufactured ending notwithstanding). Why is it that Hollywood execs like to give us tragic endings? Sometimes they seem to be just arbitrarily tacked onto the end of an otherwise good movie.

    Personally I don’t have a problem with happy endings, or codes of honor that provide ultimate salvation. I rather think that given the reach of mass media, there is a certain responsibility applicable to its creators that involves some responsibility for modeling good behavior. No? As Spiderman would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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    1. Wait -- Hollywood likes *unhappy* endings? Have I crossed into a parallel universe? (Quite possible as that was the theme of tonight's game.)

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    2. Well, sure. Where the story could have a happy or an unhappy ending. Seemingly arbitrarily, Hollywood will often have an unhappy ending; it's not rare at all. Shakespeare in Love. Easy Rider. Ex Machina. American Beauty. The Road. The Fountain. Chinatown. Sucker Punch. Memento. Thelma and Louise.

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    3. I'm shuddering at the thought of Chinatown with a happy ending, but that's exactly what Robert Towne originally had in mind:
      http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2012/12/28/did-chinatown-originally-have-a-much-different-ending/

      In most cases, though, those endings aren't simply "unhappy", and that's where Lanchester's comment might be a bit misleading. The distinction isn't happy/unhappy but the tendency of English and US fiction to steer towards a moral ending where good guys get an extra thousand points for Gryffindor and bad guys get a spank on the bottom. Better fiction doesn't aim to be comforting but to be truthful -- we can't say Eugénie Grandet has an "unhappy" ending, for example, unless we expected a kindly old God to rearrange everything we know about life on her behalf.

      Lnchester is a bit unjust saying that applies to all English fiction too btw. Dickens sensed what was wrong with the nursery-school type of resolution and tried to break away from it in Great Expectations. Blame Bulwer-Lytton for fucking that up.

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    4. I’d say for some of those films mentioned, the endings are either integral to the film, or as minimum the films would be worse off without them. I don’t know whether it’s co-incidence, but half of those films were directed by Brits and almost half of them either written or scripted by Brits. It’s not my intention to create a cross Atlantic divide, maybe it’s just us Brits like a downbeat ending?!

      I dated an American some years back, and we went to watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels at the cinema. She commented afterwards that if the film were to be released or remade for an American audience, the ending would have to change, as anything unresolved or downbeat wouldn’t be acceptable. Relating to some of my recent comments on this site, maybe that’s why Big Trouble in Little China bombed and Blade Runner has some tagged on Kubrick footage at the end.

      Relating the theme to gamebooks, there’s just something about open ended or downbeat endings that seem to stick in the psyche. To qualify the comment, some of the best gamebooks, Avenger stuck in a web, Falcon demoted to Teaboy, Heart of Ice take your pick x4.

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    5. Now you've got me thinking about good SF movies, Andy. Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner (with the elevator doors ending, not the Shining footage), Silent Running, Oblivion, District 9... it would be simplistic to categorize those endings as merely happy/unhappy. There's generally a triumph at a cost, or a difficult getting of wisdom. They're downbeat and not neatly packaged with a ribbon, that's for sure.

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    6. Of those, I've not seen Oblivion, Dave. I've added that to the basket alongside Odyssey and Runaway Train. Annihilation by Alex Garland popped up as a might like so I've taken a chance on that as well, given Ex Machina was pretty good. They're all on the way. Oh, and I see Altered Englands is out. :)

      I watched Jason and the Argonauts the other day for the first time in what, 30 odd years. A classic that has aged amazingly well, especially the skeleton battle, although Talos may just pip it as my favourite bit. I brought Clash of the Titans at the same time, so that may go on tonight.

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    7. I don't remember Clash of the Titans as fondly, Andy, though that may just be because I was older when I first saw it. But then, Sinbad & the Eye of the Tiger was only a few years earlier and that wasn't terrible. Or am I mixing it up with the Golden Voyage? The one with Tom Baker and the fight with Kali? That was a cracker. Just added Annihilation to my list too -- let's hope Garland keeps up the quality of Ex Machina.

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    8. Yes, I remember having a preference for JATA as well, Dave, although I would have first watched them around the same time as each other. I remember Medusa being well done though. I also get the Sinbad films a bit mixed up. I'll stick them on my maybe list.

      On the subject of Empire, I was watching the first half this weekend with my son. He's ok when the baddies get it, but not so much the goodies. So I've a moral dilemma (spoiler alert) whether Luke's lower arm coming off gets fast forwarded. The U rating it received at the time must have been from the same censor who did Watership Down. As I think I may have mentioned before, the concept of film classifications were thankfully lost on my parents!

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    9. Thinking it through, Dave, there's a bit of what you state in your most recent post about resonance that just resonated with me thinking about JATA and specifically why I like the Talos bit so much. Perhaps not resonance per say, more timing and visual flair. But they're possibly interlinked in some way. Aged 45, I obviously knew his head was going to turn. Aged 7 (I'm guessing), I also just knew his head was going to turn. When it did, I still almost jumped out of my seat. Roll on 40 odd years watching the same bit, I'm thinking, his head's going to turn, his head's going to turn... bloody hell his head's just turned!

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    10. It's a classic moment that keeps on giving, Andy. First you think bloody hell, OK, his head moved but maybe that's all -- no, his arms are moving too. That means he's -- yes, he's getting up off the plinth! He's chasing them!

      (Apologies to anyone to whom this comes as a spoiler, but it is Jason & the Argonauts. If you haven't seen it at least once before then you should have.)

      Funny thing about kids' reactions to blood, gore & death in movies. My friends report the same, and their kids must be about the age of yours. Yet I remember the vivid demises of Katarina (sucked into outer space) and Sara Kingdom (aged to a skeleton in twenty seconds) on Doctor Who -- I was 8 years old then, and although we all thought they were pretty gruesome ways to go, the neighbourhood kids all relished them. I don't *think* we were noticeably more psychopathic than today's generation...

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    11. Then he turns into a relentless Bogeyman. They've escaped, no he's coming round the cliff. Wait a minute, is Hercules the gruff Sergeant from Zulu? They've escaped again. Whoops, no they haven't. A picture painting a thousand words. Lovely stuff!

      I've decided we'll watch Empire unedited. As you say, we've not turned out too bad, have we? Plus, having to explain why I'm fast forwarding it may be a solution worse than the problem. Other than the Baker/Davison regeneration, the much maligned Adric was my first encounter with a Doctor Who goodie death, Dave. At least he got a decent final line though.

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    12. You mean the legendary Nigel Green, Andy, whom the director Michael Powell described as "like [a Norse god], mythical, large and gentle, suddenly exploding into rage and performing fabulous feats of strength." So a perfect bit of casting as Hercules, then. Jamie used to know his daughter (Green's, not Hercules's) and come to think they might even have been at school together.

      Good call re ESB. My parents weren't even allowed in the room when I was watching Doctor Who, and if they'd ever tried to fast-forward through anything I wanted to watch (not that we had that technology back then) it would have be grounds for me to disown them.

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    13. It's a small world, Dave. Another that sadly went young I see (before I was born in fact). At least his legacy lives on in celluloid, I suppose.

      My son was also asking whether Luke survives and if the goodies win? If you can prep an answer for me before the second half, that would be most appreciated!

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    14. Returning to my Lord of Greystone's point, I thought of an example of a really good book that manages a happy ending but not in the mawkishly cosy style of a lot of English fiction. My lords, ladies & gentlemen, allow me to recommend The House in Norham Gardens by Penelope Lively:

      https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3195899844?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

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    15. I'll put it on the list, Dave. Although it may be circa 2025 that I get around to reading it at this rate!

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