Oscar Wilde Discovers America, by Louis Edwards (2003)

We have in previous months looked at contemporary novels featuring poet, playwright and aesthete Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) as a fictional character. 

Wilde has now turned up in a series of detective novels of varying quality by Gyles Brandreth, the latest of which is Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Goal.  These books are amusing time-wasters, rich with little details of Victoriana, but Wilde traipsing around pretending to be Sherlock Holmes is something of a misconception.  Also popular were Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde, by Russell A. Brown, and The West End Horror, by Nicholas Meyer, both of which had Wilde meeting the Baker Street detective himself.

Though these books are non-serious entertainments, Wilde does show up in other, more adult fictions, as well.  He is the center of Peter Ackroyd’s most adroit novel to date, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), which includes a fascinating closing chapter written in the voice of Wilde’s (imagined by Ackroyd) valet, Maurice.

A similar literary conceit was employed by Louis Edwards (born 1962) in his excruciating novel, Oscar Wilde Discovers America, first published in 2003.  Though the mysteries mentioned above are by no means serious literature, they are in almost every way infinitely superior to this misconceived, ham-fisted and poorly written novel.

Oscar Wilde Discovers America is mostly about the valet who accompanied Wilde in 1882 on this coast-to-coast American lecture tour.  (This is based on an actual event and a very real individual, though the valet’s name and identity have been lost to history.)  The valet is named Traquair in the novel, and he is the privileged son of New York City servants.  Traquair is a recent college graduate and with the help of his father, and the banker his father works for, Traquair lands a job looking after the celebrated Irish poet. 

Traquair is African-American, a great admirer of Wilde’s work (though, historically, there was not much work at this time for anyone to admire), and eager to learn about life from a master.  Wilde, of course, is captivated by the plain wisdom of his servant, and learns much from him, as well.  Yes – it’s The Help with green carnations.

Well, as would be the case with a premise so loaded with political correctness, Wilde takes to calling his servant Tra (sigh) and steals some of the young man’s epigrams as his own.  Sharing cocktails with Tra, Wilde even imagines a new form of music that is largely improvisatory and connected to non-European rhythms.  Yes … Oscar Wilde imagines jazz.

Of course Wilde falls in love with Tra, and they consummate their relationship before Wilde returns to England and Tra to his life in the US.  And despite the fact that Tra will love many women in the future (the novel is told in flashback), he will always remember the power of Oscar’s kiss.

Don’t look at me – I didn’t write it. 

Edwards’ novel is alternately tedious and uninvolving, with long, exasperating passages where his tin ear tries to reproduce the cadence of 19^th century prose.  Here’s an example of what Edwards serves up – a particularly apt example considering the author’s limitations:

“Oh, that’s enough about my book,” Mr. Davis said.  “Tell me, do you foresee yourself documenting your Aesthetic Movement in any way?”

“Daily,” Oscar said.  “I foresee my life itself being the documentation of my movement.  If my biographer is adequate, he will note this fact.  But biographers, in their enthusiasm to re-create life, bear a great resemblance to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and their creations are just as monstrous.  And I don’t think a talent so rich as mine should be wasted on the tediousness of writing an autobiography – an endeavor which, of course, modesty precludes.”

“You might change your mind about that point should you live as long as I,” Mr. Davis said.  “One might think that when an old man lies down upon his bed at the end of one of his many long days, all he would want to do is rest.  But what you will learn is that at some point simply to rest becomes too much like death.  In the relentless retreat that is old age, an old man looks for pauses.  He spends entire mornings and entire afternoons and evenings searching his mind for remote islands of memory, for familiar by exotic distractions.  He reflects incessantly upon a past illustrious or inglorious.  One way or another he writes his autobiography.  That is what I do now over there in my little library when the mood strikes me, which is often.  I must admit that there is a temptation to grant oneself perhaps more importance than one is due, to lend to oneself a representative quality, to attempt to take on all the meaning of one’s people.  This may be my personal predicament only, but I’m not so sure.  I would wager that a poor, destitute soul who dies a lonely death in a dark hole someplace feels bearing upon his spirit the weight of the entire Confederacy of the Wretched.”

There are pages of this stuff (287, to be exact), and Your Correspondent has waded through it so you wouldn’t have to.  Oscar Wilde may have discovered America, but this book has been merely … detected.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, By Peter Ackroyd

His was the most beautiful corpse I had ever seen.  It seemed that the flush had not left the cheeks, and that the mouth was curved in the semblance of a smile.  There was no expression of sadness or of horror upon the face but, rather, one of sublime resignation.  The body itself was muscular and firmly knit; the phthisis had removed any trace of superfluous fat, and the chest, abdomen and thighs were perfectly formed.  The legs were fine and muscular, the arms most elegantly proportioned.  The hair was full and thick, curling at the back and sides, and I noticed that there was a small scar above the left eyebrow.  That was the only defect I could find.

Well, there’s a dainty dish for Halloween day, served up by novelist Peter Ackroyd (born 1949).  Ackroyd is one of our most celebrated novelists and essayists.  His gathered criticism, The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures (2001), reflects a lively and opinionated intelligence; these little gems are among the finest things he’s written.

Ackroyd’s biographies are justly famous, and his monumental Dickens (1990) may be the last word on the subject.  Written in the manner of a Victorian novel, Dickens demonstrates the importance of form matched to content.  He has also produced excellent biographies of Turner (2005), Blake (1995) and Thomas More (1998).

Most of his novels are equally distinguished, especially to this reader The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and our subject today, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008).  Readers expecting the usual hugger-mugger of less accomplished supernatural novelists, turn elsewhere.  But … if you are interested in a novel of ideas that is equal parts chiller and historical novel, then this book is for you.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is a wonderful mix of fact and fancy.  Ackroyd’s conceit is that Victor Frankenstein himself was a friend of Percy and Mary Shelley, and was there for that storm-driven evening in Switzerland when the Shelleys, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori sat around, telling ghost stories.  That evening led Mary, then 18 years old, to later write the novel Frankenstein (1818).

The novel includes a great deal of actual historical incident (Shelley sent down from school, the drowning death of his first wife, Byron’s friendship with Polidori), while skillfully inserting into it the story of Frankenstein and his monster.  But, more than anything, what Ackroyd is playing with is the Romantic novel of ideas, and the notion that Olympian notions of transcendence and heightened sensibility can be very dangerous things.  Frankenstein – himself neither poet nor artist and, perhaps, an indifferent scientist – dreams of lofty achievement and elevated sensations.  Does that drive him to commit horrible acts … or, worse yet, to create life in a mad ambition to usurp the powers of God, and then refuse responsibility for the life he has created?

More importantly, does Frankenstein’s Monster truly exist, or is it an extension of his own fears, evil ambitions, or, perhaps, a suppressed homosexual desire for Percy Shelley?

Like Dracula, the “meaning” of the Frankenstein Monster has altered with each decade since first created by Mary Shelley – the book can be interpreted as everything from a female-free reproductive paradigm to a socialist tract.  If succeeding generations have grappled with the overarching meaning of the Monster, why should Victor Frankenstein himself be exempt?

Ackroy’ds Monster – like that of Mary Shelley – is no mute, shambling zombie, but, rather, an articulate and vengeful revenant.  He did not ask to be brought into this world and, cannot understand human cruelty and apathy.  Eventually, like Milton’s Satan, he believes that it is perhaps better to do evil than to do nothing at all.  That, perhaps more than anything else, is the true meaning of Halloween.

Here’s another snippet, where the Monster confronts Frankenstein after murdering Shelley’s first wife, Harriet:

“I wished you to notice me.”

“What?”

“I wished you to think of me.  To consider my plight.”

“By killing Harriet?”

“I knew then that you would not be able to throw me off.  To disdain me.”

“Have you no conscience?”

“I have heard the word.”  He smiled, or what I took to be a smile passed across his face.  “I have heard many words for which I do not feel the sentiment here.”  He tapped his breast.  “But you understand that, do you not, sir?”

“I cannot understand anything so devoid of principle, so utterly malicious.”

“Oh, surely you have some inkling?  I am hardly unknown to you.”  I realized then that that his was the voice of youth – of the youth he had once been – and that a cause of horror lay in the disparity between the mellifluous expression and the distorted appearance of the creature.  “You have not lost your memory, I trust?”

“I wish to God I had.”

“God?  That is another word I have heard. Are you my God?”

I must have given an expression of disdain, or disgust, because he gave out a howl of anguish in a manner very different from the way he had conversed.  With one sudden movement he picked up the great oaken table, lying damaged upon the floor, and set it upright.  “You will remember this.  This was my cradle, was it not?  Here was I rocked.  Or will you pretend that the river gave me birth?”  He took a step towards me.  “You were the first thing that I saw upon this earth.  Is it any wonder that your form is more real to me than that of any other living creature?”

I turned away, in disgust at myself for having created this being.  But he misunderstood my movement.  He sprang in front of me, with a celerity unparalleled.  “You cannot leave me.  You cannot shut out my words, however distasteful they may be to you.  Were you covered by oceans, or buried in mountains, you would still hear me.”

We hear him still, nearly 200 years after his conception.  Frankenstein’s Monster is that which in each of us is both abject and terrible.

Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton

Peter Ackroyd (born 1949) is one of our most celebrated novelists and essayists.  His gathered criticism, The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures (2001), reflects a lively and opinionated intelligence; these little gems are among the finest things he’s written

Ackroyd’s biographies are justly famous, and his monumental Dickens (1990) may be the last word on the subject.  Written in the manner of a Victorian novel, Dickens demonstrates the importance of form matched to content.  He has also produced excellent biographies of Turner (2005), Blake (1995) and Thomas More (1998).

His novels include many gems, especially to this reader The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008).  However, with Chatterton (1987), this gifted writer is guilty of a miscalculation.

Chatterton concerns Charles Wychwood, a failed poet dying of a brain tumor.  Quite by accident, he comes across a portrait that may be the celebrated poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) in middle age – a mystery, since Chatterton died, a suicide, at age 17.  Coming across further documentary evidence, it’s possible that Chatterton faked his own death and continued to write well into his middle years.

Charles seeks the help of novelist Harriet Scrope, a famous writer who plagiarized the plots of her early novels, to make a splash in the world of publishing.  But the possibility of fame as a literary detective is too strong a temptation for Scrope, and she plots to steal the evidence for her own use.

Running on parallel tracks, but different eras, are the story of poet George Meredith, posing for artist Henry Wallis for the famous painting of the dead Chatterton, and also of Chatterton himself, leaving Bristol for literary fame in London.

If all this sounds beguiling, it is – in theory.  Sadly, Ackroyd abandons his usual clean prose style for a superannuated characterization that left this reader breathless.  Ever player has so many bits of business that it reads like a product of the Daniel Quilp School of Writing.  Here’s a taste:

Harriet Scrope was preparing a sandwich.  “Mustard!” she shouted, and raised the little yellow pot in triumph.  “Pickles!”  She unscrewed the jar.  “Lovely grub!”  She dug her knife into a small tin of Gordon’s Anchovy spread, and smeared it over two slices of white bread before adding these seasonings.

“Look at you,” she said to the pungent meal she had created, “You’re so colourful!  You’re much too good to eat!”  Nevertheless she managed to take large bites and, widening her eyes, swallowed vigorously.  But, even though she enjoyed the prospect of eating, she detested the actual physical process: whenever she ate she looked about anxiously and now, as more large pieces of anchovy, pickle and mustard travelled down her alimentary canal, she stared at Mr. Gaskell as if she were seeing the cat for the first time.  Then she grabbed it and began unmercifully to kiss its whiskers as it struggled in her firm hands.  “I suppose,” she said, “you want some pickles, my loveliness.  But pickles are for human beings.  At least I think that’s what Mother is.”  She held it out at arm’s length, and engaged in one of her ‘staring matches’ with it: Mr. Gaskell blinked first, and with a cry of “Victory!” she kissed it again.  As she did so it began sniffing the traces of anchovy on her breath, and she put it down quickly.  “Tell me,” she whispered, “do you ever dream of Mother?”  She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to imagine the cat world: there were walking shadows everywhere, and she saw the large dark outline of one of her own shoes.  Then the door bell rang.”

Not a minute too soon, in my opinion.

Now, an entire novel of Una O’Connor character parts is a tad too fey to be completely satisfying. Unsatisfying, too, is Ackroyd’s resolution (not disclosed here!).  While Ackroyd neatly ties up any lose threads, this reader had the impression that he didn't really know how to end it.

Ackroyd uses his premise – that fiction is not wholly organic, and that stories often influence both creators and other stories – to say several interesting things about fiction and originality.  But the insights are so deeply buried in his disjointed prose that the reader loses interest in the fine points of his tale.

Ultimately, Chatterton is unrewarding.  Ackroyd’s affinities are clearly with the past – the brief tastes of Chatterton himself and Meredith and Wallis really shine – but he has only an uneasy truce with the present.  Chatterton is a wonderful demonstration of why Ackroyd is one of our finest historical novelists who has not (yet) written an exemplary contemporary novel.