Book Alert: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
This is the largest novel of the year, as far as I can tell. Susanna Clark's 782-page opus may not have Tolkien's magisterial bulk, but it is certainly a sustained narrative of peculiar and commendable strengths. Set during the English Regency period, it is the story of how certain unique arts are lost, then discovered — but deliberately confined and controlled by one man and his power-hungry advisors — and later liberated to bring in a new age. And is the new age better than the one before? We are left with mixed feelings; it is a satisfactory state of ambivalence which agrees with what we know of human nature.
The book as a whole can be read as an analogy for technological power and its control. Of course, the most obvious of the age-defining technologies of our time is that which allows us to split the atom. True to form, the knowledge of Messrs Strange and Norrell takes most of the book to percolate to other practitioners, but once unleashed, cannot be rescinded. Also true to the reflexes of most modern states, the first practical applications of the new arts are in war — the Napoleonic wars, to be exact.
Yet, this isn't all the book is about. It is also a moving and sometimes very disturbing disquisition about the nature of human knowledge, its attainment, cost, and deployment. Jonathan Strange begins as Mr Norrell's apprentice, but rapidly comes to realise that the apprenticeship offered is merely a way of keeping his talent in check and subordinate to the state. He serves faithfully at first, but in the end realises that the state and the country are not the same, and that knowledge itself may prove more important than either. Mr Norrell begins with good intentions, but is quickly brought into the establishment so that only that august self-elected group will have the benefit of his naïve and earnest philosophizing.
The establishment quickly grows bored of Mr Norrell and wary of Mr Strange. And as is the case in many similar situations, it is the women and the disenfranchised who suffer most. Jonathan's wife Arabella is a particularly nasty casualty, as are the manservant and wife of Lord Pole, Norrell's establishment mentor. All these will be saved in the end, but the upheaval is tremendous, and there are many others who will be strewn by the wayside when the darkness is finally over.
Behind it all is the dark spectre of John Uskglass, the Raven King. Custodian of the hidden knowledge, he is an enigma at best, and a harbinger of doom at worst. All fear him, and they deal with that fear by through ultimately futile attempts to expunge all traces of his existence. But the never-present (and yet ever-present) Uskglass will have the last laugh.
The only objection one might have to this strongly atmospheric and fluent novel is that it is an epic which — while falling short of Wuthering Heights and outscoring the equally massive Harry Potter sequence — is too finely-textured, too broad, too difficult to swallow at one go. Those who get through it will have read something quite wonderful; but it is the getting through which might prove difficult.
The book as a whole can be read as an analogy for technological power and its control. Of course, the most obvious of the age-defining technologies of our time is that which allows us to split the atom. True to form, the knowledge of Messrs Strange and Norrell takes most of the book to percolate to other practitioners, but once unleashed, cannot be rescinded. Also true to the reflexes of most modern states, the first practical applications of the new arts are in war — the Napoleonic wars, to be exact.
Yet, this isn't all the book is about. It is also a moving and sometimes very disturbing disquisition about the nature of human knowledge, its attainment, cost, and deployment. Jonathan Strange begins as Mr Norrell's apprentice, but rapidly comes to realise that the apprenticeship offered is merely a way of keeping his talent in check and subordinate to the state. He serves faithfully at first, but in the end realises that the state and the country are not the same, and that knowledge itself may prove more important than either. Mr Norrell begins with good intentions, but is quickly brought into the establishment so that only that august self-elected group will have the benefit of his naïve and earnest philosophizing.
The establishment quickly grows bored of Mr Norrell and wary of Mr Strange. And as is the case in many similar situations, it is the women and the disenfranchised who suffer most. Jonathan's wife Arabella is a particularly nasty casualty, as are the manservant and wife of Lord Pole, Norrell's establishment mentor. All these will be saved in the end, but the upheaval is tremendous, and there are many others who will be strewn by the wayside when the darkness is finally over.
Behind it all is the dark spectre of John Uskglass, the Raven King. Custodian of the hidden knowledge, he is an enigma at best, and a harbinger of doom at worst. All fear him, and they deal with that fear by through ultimately futile attempts to expunge all traces of his existence. But the never-present (and yet ever-present) Uskglass will have the last laugh.
The only objection one might have to this strongly atmospheric and fluent novel is that it is an epic which — while falling short of Wuthering Heights and outscoring the equally massive Harry Potter sequence — is too finely-textured, too broad, too difficult to swallow at one go. Those who get through it will have read something quite wonderful; but it is the getting through which might prove difficult.
etched with acid at 2:05:00 am
1 Comments:
Thank you sir, you bring hope.
- suat
Post a Comment
<< Home