A tale of two novels:1
October 2nd, 2008Have just finished the first one, Birdsong, written by Sebastian Faulks as far back as 1993, A long time ago. But, no matter. The issues which it deals with are very much alive now. And it is a great novel. Which has some strong things to say about human beings and the things which drive them.
I knew, before I started reading it, that it was about the first world war, which non-Brits may need to be told, means the war between 1914 and 1918 between the Germans under the Kaiser and the Brits, and assorted allies, including the French and at the last stage the Americans.
The first part, in fact is a love story in the year 1910 between a young Brit and the wife of the French bloke whose hospitality he is enjoying. Veyr erotic. But also believable.
But I felt a bit cheated. Not that I did not enjoy the first section. But i had come to this book to learn more about that war. As i read on i got it. What Birdsong tells about that war deserves to be read by all those who did not experience it.
It is a harrowing story. Which is how i described it to an old friend and neighbour earlier this week. He said: ‘i don’t want to read harrowing novels.’
I knew what he meant. Because I have some of the same feelings. But what i did not say to him – and we are both English – was that the harrowing bits were more than compensated for, by the affirmation of what it is to be a human being. I endured the pain, because the Brit who relates the story endured it, and lived on. No to a ‘happy’ life. But to a life.
Birdsong is a work of the imagination. Sebastian Faulks who wrote it, is younger than me, but he was inspired by members of his family, who knew what it was like in the trenches in 1917.
Faulks’ family was the comfortably off middle class. In first wordl war terms, they were he officier class. But what he writes hones in with my memories of my Uncle Bill, who was there in the trenches in 1917.
Bill was working class. And he never talked about that war in my childhood. He was not, in my youth, a role model for the growing youth. He was a hen-pecked husband, dominated by a strong-minded wife. But he was there during my childhood, because he used to stop home on his way back from work to talk to my mother and her children.
And although he was nearly blind because of the gas of 1917 he lived 25 years longer than his wife and longer than my father and mother. Right up until the time he died I tried to get him to tell me what it was acually like in the trenches in 1917.
He never told me, although. over the years, I had learnt all the tricks that journalists learn to get people to tell them the facts.
But reading the Faulks novel has given me a glimse of the reality he experienced. Faulks, 90 years after these events happened, hais imagined how it was for the people who inhabited that world.
My Uncle Bill would have said he was spot on.
Enough for tonight. This is a tale of two novels.
Next time, you will hear about the second one.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Hi,
I have been reading your stuff for a while now, and thought I should comment on this post. As a student in First World War studies, I become a little exasperated when people talk about things which they know little about, perpetuating myths with contentment.
Having read Birdsong a while ago now, I will admit that I cannot remember the entire ins and outs of the tale, but I do remember thinking that, as well written as it is, it was, truth be told, far from the truth of the matter (as expected for someone who had to tie everything up conveniently within 500 pages). Faulks does touch upon things within the tale, but serves to romanticise the war and paint a picture not entirely in keeping with the realities of the event.
It does hint at some realities, but, as one great sci-fi programme once put it: the truth is out there. That seems to be the case for the war, Birdsong is a good place to start, but certainly not to finish.
Luke_D
October 8th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Thanks for your comment. And glad that you are studying the first world war.
But your comment on my blog made me quite angry. This comment.
As a student in First World War studies, I become a little exasperated when people talk about things which they know little about, perpetuating myths with contentment.
Please tell me, and the readers of my blog, what it is that you have found about the First World War, which contradicts what I have written about it. I am not perpetuating contentment.
On the contrary, I want to pass on the experienece of people like my Uncle Bill, who was there in the trenches of the first world war. And survived. And who lived to be 90. But who did not want to tell me, the unspeakable horrors that human beings could do to each other.
What I have written is first hand reporting of what I have experienced. Born 1934 I was brought up to hate the Nazis, and the Germanms. Same thing.
But I discovered in my adult life that far more people were slaughtered in the first world war, than in the second.
And that most of these people were members of the British working class, into which I was born.
Faulks, as it happens, was born into the British middle classes. But the people in his family he talked with were troubled by what happened way back in 1914-18. Like his protagonist in Birdsong, they were troubled because what they were caused to do, offended what they thouch decent human beings should do.
Faulks’s novel is a work of the imagination.
But he, like me, has listened to the what those members of his familiy have felt able to tell him, about what happened in 1914-18 and 1939-45.
That is only part of the truth.
Because the ‘truth’ ai a long way from what we have experienced.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Hi Robert,
I did not wish to offend you with my comment, indeed, the part you have drawn anger with was more a general reflection on general ‘public’ thinking on the war than a criticism aimed at you. You obviously do know what you are talking about, and have obviously listened to your relatives when they have talked about the war.
The trouble is there is still a lot of rubbish written in relation to the war, Alan Clark’s “The Donkey’s” written in the 1960′s started this general criticism from which much ‘public’ understanding has been drawn. This was highlighted to great effect in the 1990′s when a daily tabloid (I forget which) printed an article calling for the statue of Douglas Haig to be pulled down because he was the ‘butcher of the Somme’. Most people now seem to know about the ‘butcher’ but don’t know the ‘full picture’ as it were. That’s just one example of where the public perception of the war varies from the scholarly one, there are a fair few in relation to WW1.
My point was that in many ways Faulks plays to this public perception of the war in his book (even if he himself did understand more the realities of the situation), but he had to do this due to limits of space etc.
Obviously you aren’t playing to such a perception, and I very much enjoy reading various accounts of people who were there, it brings it home to me in a way a textbook never could. Anyway, keep up the good work!
Luke_D