Babel Tower (88 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
The trial is to be characterised by Hefferson-Brough’s paucity of vocabulary for discussing literary merit. Alexander thinks at first that this is due to an excessive concern for the jury’s sensibilities as common readers, or “ordinary men and women,” whatever those are. But his experience of Hefferson-Brough’s questions, which is very similar to that of the specifically
literary
experts who follow him, is of struggling through a suffocating cloud of wool, trying to find air, trying to find light, trying to make a precise sentence and being told again and again that his vocabulary—his expert vocabulary—is inadmissible in this place, must be rephrased. Scrupulously Alexander tries to say that one passage is more successful than another, that one scene is almost tragic whereas another is merely blackly comic, Grand Guignol. “And what do you mean by Grand Guignol, Mr. Wedderburn? Tell us in
English, please, tell us what that is, so we may share your thought.” And of the scenes that Alexander says are “less good than others,” Hefferson-Brough immediately asks, “But would you say that this scene is well-written? Does it have literary merit? Is it good, or is it not?” And Alexander says again and again, because he must, that it is good.
Babbletower
is flattened in his hearers’ minds to a series of “good” passages.
In answer to Samuel Oliphant he reiterates that
Babbletower
is a serious work, by a promising young writer, with a moral purpose.
Sir Augustine Weighall then cross-examines.
Q. Mr. Wedderburn. You are a man of very wide reading, a man whose life has been devoted to great writing. Your own verse drama gives me intense pleasure, I may say, on the page as on the stage. I do not flatter: I am glad to take this opportunity of speaking of your “lovely inchanting language.” I want to ask you a simple question. Did you
enjoy
reading
Babbletower
?
A. Enjoy? Yes, and no.
Q. Let us discuss both halves of that entirely comprehensible answer. Let us start with the “yes.”
What
did you enjoy?
A. Vivid descriptions. The successful depiction of a world part fairytale, part dystopia.
Q. Dystopia?
A. Anti-utopia. Depiction of a not-ideal world. Good writing. The sentences are lively. The atmosphere is brooding.
Q. Did the book—I know you will answer clearly, for you are a thoughtful man and a writer yourself—did the book give you any
sexual
pleasure?
A. (After some thought) Some, occasionally. Not much. All writing is connected with sexual pleasure. Wordsworth said the rhythms of language are the rhythms of the human body, of “the grand principle of pleasure in which we live and move and have our being.”
Q. That is very interesting. The rhythms of all writing are in your view connected to sexual pleasure. That is indeed very interesting
and illuminating. Did the book give you any more specific sexual pleasure—such as you might feel looking at an erotic painting, for instance?
A. Not much.
Q. Yet you said it was well written, and “vivid,” you said, and “lively.” A very large proportion of this book is descriptions of sexual acts, of naked bodies. Yet they gave you no pleasure?
A. Not much.
Q. Are you perhaps denying the pleasure, out of a desire to defend the book?
A. I don’t think so. I think the author meant me to experience only a limited pleasure. Meant me to imagine pleasure, and then to find he had cut it off, so to speak.
Q. He tried to disgust you?
A. That is the
unpleasant
side. He had good reasons.
Q. He may well have had. So, in so far as you responded sexually to his writing, it was with disgust?
A. It is more complex than that.
Q. More complex. Perhaps the writing was meant to have an
emetic
effect, to disgust you with the world and action of the book?
A. It is more complex than that, too.
Q. It seems to be very complex. The only certain thing is that you are resolute to deny that he meant you to experience any pleasure in the infliction of pain, any reprehensible pleasure in the infliction of pain?
A. I did not say that.
Q. And you do not think that?
A. You have me in a grammatical snarl.
Q. But you know what I am asking?
A. I do not think that the intention of the author was to make me feel reprehensible pleasure in the infliction of pain.
Q. And you did not feel any?
A. No. Or almost none.
Q. You are a man who has to be truthful, I see, Mr. Wedderburn. Not none.
Almost
none.
Tell me, as to the question of literary merit.
How good
do you think
Babbletower
is, in literary terms? We are not allowed to compare books as to relative obscenity, but we are allowed to make comparisons of
literary merit.
D. H. Lawrence, when
Lady Chatterley
was tried, was taught in many university courses, throughout the world, as was abundantly testified. My learned friend Gerald Gardiner, on that occasion, made the point that some of the early works of Chaucer might be thought to be risqué without that great name attached to them. Tell me, Mr. Wedderburn—as a teacher, as a writer—
how good
is Mr. Jude Mason? As good as D. H. Lawrence? As good as William Burroughs? As good as Mickey Spillane?
A. It is his first book. It is a serious literary book. It is not a shocker, like Mickey Spillane, who is unreadable, in my view. It is well written and seriously meant. You can’t really come to any conclusions about the final status of living writers at the outset of their careers.
Q. You can’t really come to any conclusions about the literary merit of young living writers at the outset of their careers?
A. I said “final status.”
Q. But judgements of literary merit are
provisional
in this kind of case, as opposed to that of D. H. Lawrence.
Samuel Oliphant objects. The judge overrules him. Alexander says they are of course provisional, compared to D. H. Lawrence, but that does not mean they cannot be made.
The next witness to be called is Dr. Naomi Lurie, Reader in English Literature in Oxford University, and a Fellow of Somerville College. She says that she is the author of various books, including
Dissociated Sensibility, Myth or History?
(1960). She says she is in charge of the studies of many young women, and would be quite happy for them to read
Babbletower.
She would, she says when
pressed, encourage them to do so. No, she would not positively
teach
the book. She is opposed to the teaching of contemporary writing; Oxford University until very recently taught
nothing
written later than 1830.
She is a dark-haired woman in serviceable tweed, in her mid-fifties. Hefferson-Brough says to her, “You are a maiden lady, living in an exclusively female college, and you write on devotional poetry. But you admire this book, you have said, you have said you believe it has literary merit?”
Dr. Lurie says, “I am certainly unmarried, and I certainly teach women. I don’t believe women make any different literary judgements from men.”
There is a ripple of laughter in the Court. Dr. Lurie smiles primly.
Sir Augustine tempts Dr. Lurie into the statement that Swift’s
Modest Proposal
for solving the Irish problem by roasting and stewing the infant Irish is shocking in the same way as
Babbletower.
“Or worse.” He asks Dr. Lurie if Swift makes the prospective taste, “the culinary delights,” of the broiled babies attractive. No, says Dr. Lurie. And the loathsome practices in
Babbletower,
the sodomy, the torture, the orgies, says Sir Augustine. “They are unattractive in the same way?”
“I think so,” says Dr. Lurie. Sir Augustine’s fine face takes on an ironic smile, which he turns on the jury.
“You find the descriptions of Narcisse’s juvenile peccadilloes, of Damian’s love-making with Roseace, as repugnant as Swift’s broiled babies?”
“I do not say that. Swift is a pure satirist. He writes with
saeva indignatio.
”
“Savage indignation,” Sir Augustine translates kindly for the jury.
“Whereas it is part of Mr. Mason’s plan to, so to speak, put the reader through the pleasures of the
Babbletower.
”
“To
put the reader through.
Not to stir, not to titillate, not to seduce? Your verb is austere and pedagogic.”
“He does wish to titillate, at the time, of course. But temporarily.”
“He turns titillation on and off, like a tap.”
“If you like,” says Dr. Lurie.
Anthony Burgess is the next witness. His face is craggy; his voice is round and beautifully produced. He praises
Babbletower
in musical terms:
brio, appassionata, fugue.
He says in answer to Hefferson-Brough
that he believes that
Babbletower
is a deeply moral, almost too moral, book.
Q. How can a book be too moral, Mr. Burgess?
A. Well, as I have said before from time to time, the value of art is always diminished by the presence of elements that move to action. This book is didactic. The didactic is lesser than the purely aesthetic. It has
designs on you.
Never trust a book that has designs on you.
Q.
Babbletower
has moral designs on you?
A. Yes. It moves by disgusting and frightening you.
Q. But it is a work of literature.
A. I don’t know what you mean by “but.” It
is
a work of literature. It is a very promising, serious piece of writing. It ought to be praised. It isn’t
Ulysses
or
The Rainbow
but it ought to be read, it ought to be discussed.
Sir Augustine rises to cross-examine. He measures the novelist with his eye.
Q. You quoted yourself just now. You said that the book was a lesser art-form than the purely aesthetic because it had designs on you, it moved to action.
A. It is didactic, yes.
Q. In your review—your very perceptive and brilliant review of the book—you do not only say that the book moves to action because it is
didactic.
You associate the didactic and the pornographic as “moving to action.” You associate them
in this book.
A. That is so. You have understood the review.
Q. So the book is pornographic as well as didactic.
A. It is not high art, in which everything is resolved in a balance, a form that can be contemplated with aesthetic pleasure. It is a mixed form, a hybrid form, which makes its effect by moving to action. That does not mean it is not a work of art, or that it
should not be published. We can’t suppress every book that isn’t as good as
Ulysses.
Or
The Rainbow.
Judge.
Indeed not. I must remind the jury that the opinion of literary experts on whether or not the book is obscene should not be taken into account.
Q. Mr. Burgess, I am going to ask you, as I have asked others, whether the book gave you any sexual pleasure? Moved you sexually?
A. Oh yes. It did. It’s a good book, it does its work. It stirs you up. Most good books do. Reading and sexual excitement are intimately connected.
Q. Except in
Ulysses
?
A. In
Ulysses
of course, too. That’s an unworthy question. But differently.
Q. Differently?
A. It’s rawer, here. In
Babbletower.
Q. Mr. Burgess, you are a writer. A daring writer, you take risks. When you write about sexual excitement, or even more, about cruelty, do you imagine your reader as you write?
A. Yes.
Q. How do you imagine him or her?
A. As like myself. Excited when I am. Detached as I am.
Q. Do you imagine the effects of your writings on the less educated, the more imaginatively restricted persons who may also read your books?
A. That is harder. It would be silly to pretend everyone reads in the same way. It would be silly to pretend one could gauge the effect of a piece of writing on all its potential readers.
Q. Do you feel responsible for the weak, the uninstructed, the excitable readers of your books?
A. You can’t be, wholly, responsible for all readers. But up to a point, yes, I do. And, in answer to your unspoken hint or
question, I am quite sure that Jude Mason is not trying to
work up
ignorant readers into a state of irresponsible excitement. But you can’t predict that that will never happen.
Q. You can’t predict that that will never happen.
The next witness is a novelist too, who is also lead reviewer for a serious Sunday newspaper. He is a dapper, pretty man called Douglas Corbie; he is little, with a melodious but insistent voice, and time is beginning to etch nutcracker lines in his cheeks. His hair is the cream colour of metallic blond hair going white. He has written many thick and well-received novels—
A Pernicious Influence, Hengist’s Horse, The Voice of the Mock Turtle, Life in a Glass House
—and has sat on the committee of the Society of Authors and the Literature Panel of the Arts Council. He is examined by Samuel Oliphant. Douglas Corbie agrees that he is himself a novelist of some importance, that he is a leading critic, that he has read
Babbletower,
and admires it.
Q. It is a serious work of literature, in your opinion.
A. Without any doubt. The young man is extremely promising. He has much to learn but he is extremely promising. He should be encouraged; young writers should be encouraged, as I know to my cost, having found the going hard.
Q. Can you say why it is a serious work of literature?
A. Oh yes. Because it treats of evil. We don’t consider evil, in our society, you know. We are English and
ever so nice
and we are obsessed with problems of right and wrong
manners,
with little details of social correctness, yes, with silly things like fish-forks and
placements,
and whether people have the right
accent,
or whether their shoes are or aren’t nasty. And this in the time of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, so shaming in many ways, all our fuss about flowerbeds and whether white flowers ought to be in herbaceous borders, or whether they are vulgar, you know?
Q. But does Jude Mason tackle the problem of evil?
A. Oh, well, yes, he does,
indeed he does,
and with gusto, with such gusto almost
too
enthusiastically, all those Gothic chains and dungeons, a bit bathetic, in a way, but very effective, very effective,
no doubt. William Golding has treated evil.
Lord of the Flies,
a book about the evil of schoolboys let loose, very revealing. Mr. Mason’s dormitory life in
Babbletower
is the evil of schoolboys let loose too, a Grand Guignol version.
I myself
prefer to embed my depiction of evil in the day-to-day, in drawing-rooms and theatre bars and suburban kitchens and school staffrooms, I prefer to embed it in
felt life,
as James said, yes, to notice the social detail. As Auden said, “A crack in the teacup opens / A lane to the land of the dead.” Teacups will suffice, though Mr. Mason appears to think not, he chooses the full panoply, beatings and hangings, a more
dangerous
way, difficult to bring off—he
does
bring it off, very largely, of course—but
I myself
believe the study of evil is more effectively embedded in
felt life.
The people at Auschwitz, you know, the torturers, they went home at night to suburban kitchens and pink lampshades and knuckles of pork, all that stuff, you can do it through lampshades and pork, you don’t need …
Q. What do you say of Mr. Mason’s book? Is it serious? Is it good?
A. Oh yes, as I said, he’s good, he’s learning, he will be very good, it’s important to let him keep trying, very important. Yes.