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“The finest, most courageous, truthful and humane book written in Europe in the course of this accursed war.”
That's Maxim Gorky talking about H G Wells's 1916 novel Mr Britling Sees It Through, a straight-from-the-heart response to the Great War that takes us through the experience of looking on at such a calamity. It's like the stages of grief, with anger, bargaining, negotiation, denial, guilt. A magnificent work full of anguish and humanity which was deservedly the best-selling book of its day.
Today the novel is in public domain, yet no major publisher offers an edition. There's a profusion of badly formatted editions from small publishers, including one that unaccountably has a photo of Montgomery Clift on the cover.
Do the big publishers think the book is no longer relevant? "All that was a century ago, let's move on..."? Not so, sadly. Wells would be appalled to learn that it's still possible for one man to order the invasion of a neighbouring country and unleash untold suffering on its inhabitants. Sons still die, daughters are still raped, civilians terrorized, all because of an autocrat's ambition and the senselessness of nationalist imperialism.
Don't take my word for it. Here's the author Adam Roberts writing in The Guardian:
"Strange to think a book so fêted and successful could drop so comprehensively off the radar. What makes it stranger is that the novel is exactly as good as Wells’s contemporaries thought: a wonderfully detailed, evocative and moving portrait of England at war."
You can get the ebook on Gutenberg, and that version is free, or you might like the new Spark Furnace edition with no fifties film star in sight. Available in the US from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and in the UK from Amazon, Blackwell's and Waterstones.
I will give it a read, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou'll need to be patient with it in places, as the style and pace are not of this era but the problems and feelings certainly are. Let me know what you think.
DeleteAnd now I've read it. You can certainly see Wells' mastery of the written word. He tracks every thread as he weaves them together and apart, then bringing them back together again. The thought processes are all there. And yes, the issues are still relevant; it's only the specifics that have changed. On the other hand, I agree that his style and pace make the book less accessible to today's audience. It took me a week to read this, which is a long time for me. It comes across as a dissertation in narrative form. Like a conversation at a party that you can't politely escape from. Yes, he wanted to share the ebb and flow of his thoughts, one idea building on another or knocking it down. But honestly, I don't think it's very accessible to an audience of any significant size today, in its original form. Finally, I can't say that I agree with some of his conclusions. But agreement isn't necessary for his message to get through. I also enjoy the glimpses into a 1916 POV, and specifically a British POV.
DeleteYes, it's by no means my favourite Wells book, and far from his best work in terms of quality, but the relevance of the subject matter and the warts-&-all honesty of his self-portrait make it required reading, I think.
DeleteAs someone who read the book a year or two ago (on Dave's recommendation, naturally), I can only echo the recommendations. Personally I didn't find the style/pace at all difficult to get used to. And its relevance is acute.
ReplyDeleteThis Great and Terrible War is the Gotterdammerung of one world and the genesis- point of our own, I believe, and we should all serve our time in its trenches to understand that and learn its lessons.
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