(26) New Trends in British Fiction in the 1970s and 1980s.

(M. Amis, I. McEwan, D. Lessing, A. Carter, K. Ishiguro, V. S. Naipaul, etc.).

 

T h e  T w e n t i e t h  C e n t u r y

[see "Background for Topics 12-27..."]

 

M a r t i n  A m i s  ( b . 1 9 4 9 )

L i f e :

- son of Kingsley A.

- attended a number of different schools, travelled extensively (due to his father’s lit. success) x but: managed to graduate from Oxford

- underwent a period of ed. work, became a full-time writer

W o r k :

- a novelist, short story writer, and lit. critic

- conc.: the absurdity of the post-modern condition, the excesses of late-capitalist Western society, and the grotesque of its caricatures

- his vision of the modern world = a frenetic cosmopolitan city full of sex and violence

- style: a characteristic ‘terrible compulsive vividness’ (K. Amis), reinforced by his use of a violent slang

D e k a d e n t  F i c t i o n :

- intensely witty x but: a somewhat filthy and sexual kind of humour

- satires on the modern-day metropolitan torpor and cultural trendiness

The Rachel Papers (1973):

= his 1^st novel, the most traditional

< autobiog.: a bright, egoistic teenager and his relationship with the eponymous girlfriend in the y. before going to uni

Dead Babies (1975):

- more flippant in tone

- a typically ‘sixties’ plot: a house full of characters abusing various substances

- establ. a number of his characteristics: a mordant black humour, obsession with the zeitgeist [= Ger. for ‘the spirit of the time’], authorial invention, defiant casualness, and a character subjected to sadistically humorous misfortunes and humiliations

Success (1978)

Other People (1981): a fragmented and nightmarish psychological thriller

Einstein’s Monsters (1986): a coll. of short stories on nuclear destruction

F i c t i o n  M a s t e r p i e c e s :

Money: A Suicide Note (1984):

= an ambitious longer novel

- revives his taste for gross and excessive comedy

- set in high-life Am.

- the protagonist = John Self, a successful director of commercials and an archetypal hedonist [= Gr. for ‘pleasure’], arrives to N.Y. to shoot his 1^st feature film

- despite the subtitle x the introd. makes clear that the protagonist’s suicide attempt will be unsuccessful

- concl.: S. loses all his money (if it ever existed) x but: still able to laugh at himself and be cautiously optimistic about his future

- the author writes himself into the novel as an arrogant overseer and confidant in S.’s final breakdown

London Fields (1989):

= a dystopian novel somewhat in a Gothic manner

- revives his disgusted affection for urban low life

- set in a London underworld, in a not far away future

- the social system collapses, the condition of the environment and the climate gets critical, diseases and body distortions spread, etc.

- the protagonist: a woman on her way to the inevitable violent death

- assisted by one (seemingly?) respectable man and another vulgar working-class youth = alcoholic and gambler using an idiosyncratic language of half-understood gestures and the language of tabloid sports columns

Time’s Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense (1991):

= a much acclaimed shorter novel

- sensitive to the enlarged perspective resulting from forsaking the conventionally linear narrative

- time runs backwards during the entire novel, incl. the actual dialogue being spoken backwards

- narrates the autobiog. of a doctor who helped torture and murder Jews in the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust

x due to the backward narration the doctor returns the dead to life: the dead from the Holocaust revive, return to their homes, become children, then babies, and then re-enter their mothers’ wombs where they cease to exist

N o n - F i c t i o n :

The Moronic Inferno (1986):

- a coll. of essays on contemp. Am.

Experience (2000):

= a memoir, largely on his relationship with his famous author-father

- Kingsley A. famously showed no interest in his son’s work: complained of his ‘breaking the rules’ and ‘drawing attention to himself’

 

I a n  M c E w a n  ( b . 1 9 4 8 )

L i f e :

= ‘Ian MacAbre’ (from the nature of his early work)

- spent much of his childhood in Far East, Ger., and North Af. (due to his father’s occupation as an army officer)

- received uni education, became the 1^st student of Malcolm Bradbury’s (1932 – 2000, a Br. writer and academic) pioneering postgraduate course of ‘Creative Writing’

W o r k :

= a distinctly urban writer

- contrasts repudiating horror subjects x a precise, matter-of-fact style

F i c t i o n :

Early Period:

- notoriously controversial in subject matter

- preocc. with dark, perverse, even gothic material: violence, murder, incest, paedophilia, etc.

- reinforced by a troubling narrative framework: the conventional moral perspectives disrupted x but: the reader drawn into involvement with the characters and into complicity with their crimes

First Love, Last Rites (1975):

= his 1^st publ. work, a coll. of short stories

> attracted immediate attention

In Between the Sheets (1978):

= his 2^nd coll. of short stories

- incl. claustrophobic tales of childhood, deviant sexuality, and disjointed family life

> remarkable for their formal experimentation and controlled narrative voice

The Cement Garden (1978):

= a sexually explicit novella

- preocc. with perversion and obsession: the private disposal by orphan children of the corpse of their mother under domestic cement

- the 4 children bury their mother in the basement to avoid being taken into care, and attempt to carry on as normal a life as possible x but: an incestuous relationship develops btw the 2 eldest children as they seek to emulate their parents roles

- the cement = symbolical of the uniformity of a London of concrete tower blocks on the ‘cracked asphalt’ with ‘weeds…pushing through’

> establ. his characteristic disconcerting x but: chaste prose style: perfectly modulated, cultivated, and precise

The Comfort of Strangers (1981):

= the most mature novel of the period, his early masterpiece

< its location and claustrophobic concentration indebted to Thomas Mann’s (1875 – 1955) Death in Venice (1912)

- a more substantial investigation of psychopathology: a haunting tale of fantasy, violence, and obsession

- a striking portrayal of an E couple murdered during their holiday in Venice and their dreamlike collusion with their charismatic assassin

Mature Period:

- moves away from the most disquieting of his early themes

x but: continues to explore the impact of unusual or extreme situations on ordinary people

- turns to broader themes: examines how social and political issues determine our personal lives

The Child in Time (1987):

= an intense and sober study of the devastating effects of the loss of a child through abduction

- the infant daughter of young parents kidnapped and never found

- a further subplot examines the psyche of a fictitious senior politician

The Innocent (1990):

- conc. with the espionage in the post-war Berlin during the 1950s

- examines an absurd love triangle against the background of the Cold War

Black Dogs (1992):

- investigates the nature of evil

- incl. the most significant events of modern Eur. history: the Nazi death-camps, the post-war Fr., the collapse of the Berlin Wall, etc.

Enduring Love (1997):

= widely regarded his mature masterpiece

- conc. with a person with ‘de Clerambault’s syndrome’ [= ‘erotomania’, a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief of another person, usually of higher social status, being in love with him/her]

Amsterdam (1998):

= M.: a ‘contemporary fable’

- the characters = 3 men: a composer, a nwsp ed., and a politician

- meet at the funeral of their former lover and spark off a bitter feud

> won him the Booker Prize [= Br.’s most prestigious lit. award]

x but: lacks the moral menace and disconcerting mood of his previous tales

=> the award seemed to signal the integration of a radical presence into the comfortable contemp. mainstream

Atonement (2001):

= again a challenging and ambitious novel

- the narrator = an elderly novelist, writes from the perspective of her own younger self shortly before and then during the WW II

- the atonement = the goal of both her life and her text: destroys the harmony of her childhood home due a crucial error of perception (may have been an act of malice) and struggles to make amends for the irrevocable damage she has caused:

(a) questions the possibility of achieving such a grace

(b) expresses a troubled awareness of the complexities of responsibility and agency, both in writing and life

Saturday (2005):

- follows a single x but: an especially eventful day in the life of a neurosurgeon

D r a m a :

The Imitation Game (1981):

= a clever TV play

- conc. with a code-breaking centre in WW II

- also specifically addresses the position of women in contemp. society

The Ploughman’s Lunch (1985):

= a screenplay

- satirises political complacency in the time of restlessness

 

D o r i s  L e s s i n g

[see L. under ‘22 Colonial Experience’]

 

A n g e l a  C a r t e r  ( 1 9 4 0 – 9 2 )

- magic realism:

(a) preocc. with an extravagant fictional world of magic and theatre

(b) reinvented the fairy-tale for a knowing adult public

(c) => infused her narratives with macabre fantasy and erotic comedy

N o n - f i c t i o n :

The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979):

= a deft and suggestive essay

- claims a pornographic fantasy too would have its legitimate place in lit. once it could be moulded to the service of women and once women had ceased to be consid. mere commodities

x but: scarcely a pornographer herself

- renegotiates the elements shaping the traditional accounts of M-F relationships with a startling vividness

x but: rarely a polemical writer

F i c t i o n :

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972):

- the protagonist = a man divided btw a harmonious / infertile calm x a disharmonious / fertile storm, btw the stable / colourless world x the fragile dream-world

- significant of the author’s own narrative attraction to the margins of the imagination

The Passion of New Eve (1977)

Nights at the Circus (1984):

= a theatrical novel, together with her Wise Children consid. her masterpiece

- set in the golden age of escapist entertainment: the late 19^th – early 20^th c.

- the protagonist = a cockney bird-woman, hatched from an egg <=> the offspring of Leda and Jove

- experiences a foster-childhood in a brothel, miraculously sprouts wings at the age of puberty, and becomes a star of the London music-hall and the circus in St Petersburg

- survives an attempt at seduction by a Rus. Grand Duke x marries an Am. journalist in the wastes of Siberia

- concl.: literary has the last laugh as her husband discovers she is not ‘the only fully-feathered intacta in the history of the world’

Wise Children (1991):

= a theatrical novel

- set in the golden age of escapist entertainment

- the characters:

(a) the theatrical twins, both dancers with successful careers

(b) the illegitimate offspring of an eminent Shakespearian actor = a pillar of the ‘legitimate’ theatre

- conc.:

(a) in part an exploration of sisterhood and interchangeable identity

(b) in part an autobiog. quest to justify this Shakespearian descent

- the narrator = the chatty and digressive twin, both creates and subverts: forges links btw ‘theatre’ and ‘literature’, threatens to undermine neat gender definitions

Fireworks (1974) and The Bloody Chamber (1979):

= coll. of Gothic short stories

 

K a z u o  I s h i g u r o  ( b . 1 9 5 4 )

L i f e :

- b. in Nagasaki (Japan) x but: moved to En. when 6 y. old

=> a Br. author of Japanese orig.

- received uni education, became a student of M. Bradbury’s course ‘Creative Writing’ (and a course-mate of I. McEwan)

W o r k :

- a novelist, short story writer, and screenplay writer

- a highly subjective narration: his 1^st person narrators often exhibit human failings and reveal their flaws implicitly during the narrative x but: rendered as sympathetic

- frequent setting in the past: his delicate, historically accurate descriptive technique captures the details and atmosphere of a period

- no sense of resolution: the issues of his characters remained buried in the past and unresolved

- concl. with a melancholic resignation: the characters accept their past and their present and find comfort in their relief from mental anguish

A Pale View of the Hills (1982):

- the protagonist = a Japanese widow settled in En.

- recalls the end of the WW II and the destruction and rehabilitation of Nagasaki

An Artist of the Floating World (1986):

- set in Nagasaki, in the period of reconstruction following the detonation of the atomic bomb (1945)

- a delicate fictional study of an ageing painter’s awareness of, and detachment from, the political and cultural development of 20^th c. Japan

- the narrator haunted by his military past: forced to come to terms with his part in the WW II

- accused by the new generation of being a part of Japan’s misguided foreign policy: confronted with the ideals of the modern world repres. in his grandson

The Remains of the Day (1989):

- set in the large country house of an E lord, in the pre-WII and post-WWII period

- the protagonist = a typical elderly E butler

- recalls in his last days his life in the 20^th c. En. and evaluates whether or not it was necessary always to retain his loyalty: failed to reconcile his sense of service and his personal life and so failed to act on his romantic feelings twd the housekeeper

- depicts the personal disillusionment against the broader background of WW II

- asks delicate and carefully framed x but: none the less demanding cultural questions

> won him the Booker Prize

The Unconsoled (1995):

- set in an unnamed Eur. city

- the protagonist = a concert pianist

- struggles to fulfil a schedule of rehearsals and performances

When We Were Orphans (2000):

- set in Shanghai (China) in the early 20^th c.

- the protagonist = a private detective

- investigates his parents’ disappearance in the city some 20 y. earlier

Never Let Me Go (2005):

- set in the late 1990s, in an alternate x but: very similar world

- digresses into the sci-fi genre, employs a futuristic tone

 

V ( i d i a d h a r )  S ( u r a j p r a s a d )  N a i p a u l  ( b . 1 9 3 2 )

L i f e :

- b. in Trinidad (the E -speaking Caribbean) in a family of Ind. descent x but: settled in En.

- received uni education

- received the Booker Prize for In a Free State (1971)

- knighted (1990)

- received the Nobel Prize for Lit. (2001)

W o r k :

- a novelist, short story writer, travel book writer, and author of non-fiction, essays, and criticism

- a wide range of settings: carries readers to En., Ind., Af., or Am.

<=> a J. ‘Conrad’s heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings’

F i c t i o n :

(a) Early Period:

- a starkly satiric vision of the world

- comedies of manners: comic portraits of Trinidadian society

The Mystic Masseur (1957):

- set in a Trinidad viewed with an exile’s acute and ironic eye

Miguel Street (1959):

= a coll. of short stories

A House for Mr Biswas (1961):

< semi-autobiog., draws on his father’s life in Trinidad

- described by one of its critics as ‘a tender tragi-comedy’:

(a) follows the declining fortunes of the protagonist from cradle to grave

(b) traces the disintegration of a traditional way of life in the post-colonial world

(c) => approaches an epic scale

- the protagonist = an Indo-Trinidadian man, strives for success and mostly fails

- concl.: marries into a family only to find himself dominated by it, finally sets the goal of owning his own house

(b) Mature Period:

- a more modulated tone

- preocc. with colonial and post-colonial societies in the process of de-colonisation

- develops political themes

The Mimic Men (1967)

In a Free State (1971):

= his masterpiece, won him the Booker Prize

- consists of 3 stories and 2 liking diary entries

- an ironic, searching, bleak x but: emotionally engaging study of what it means to be enslaved x to be free

Guerrillas (1975):

= one of his most complex novels, and most suspenseful: incl. ‘a series of shocks, like a shroud slowly unwound from a bloody corpse, showing the damaged – and familiar – face last’

- set on an unnamed 3^rd World Caribbean island

- populated by a mix of ethnicities x but: dominated by post-colonial Br.

- an infertile, crowded place, marred by gas fumes and the dust from the bauxite plant

A Bend in the River (1979):

- set in an unnamed Af. country after gaining its independence

- the protagonist = an Ind. Muslim, brought up during the colonial period as neither Eur. nor fully Af.

=> observes the rapid changes in his homeland with an outsider’s distance

(c) Later Period:

- a more compelling tone

- a darker and more pessimistic vision of the human condition: exploits the insensitivities and disconnections marring the relations among individuals, races, and nations

- preocc. with an individual’s struggle with cultures: exploits the desperate and destructive conditions of the struggle

The Enigma of Arrival (1987):

= a personal account of his life in En.

N o n - f i c t i o n :

- author of a number of books about Ind., the Caribbean, and the Islamic societies

- also author of coll. of essays on a variety of themes

An Area of Darkness (1964):

- conc. with Ind.

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981)

= a ‘cultural exploration’ [= study] of Islam

Literary Occasions (2004):

= a coll. of essays