The Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and bThe Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and birds; beyond that room is the Golden Room, then the Jade Room, and finally the Scarlet Room. When the Japanese invaded Malaya during World War II, and held it for 3 years, the Chinese merchant was beheaded. His head was displayed on a pole for all of the villagers to see and so be instructed on the new order. During those 3 years of occupation, depending on the whims of the occupying soldiers, villagers were marched to the courtyard of the Love Pavilion and made to kneel there. 42 villagers eventually lost their heads in front of the Chinese merchant's pavilion. The courtyard became known as the Garden of Madness.
The Love Pavilion was written by one of my favorite authors, Paul Scott. It displays many of the virtues that I loved in his Raj Quartet: dense, sometimes hallucinatory prose full of vivid description - of landscapes, places, bodies, faces; characterization that goes deep, so that a certain understanding of his characters is reached, while still leaving them ambiguous, capable of terrible deeds; themes that are concerned with masculinity and femininity and gender roles, the shifting roles of colonizer and colonized, and the metaphysical: what is the nature of the mind, what is the purpose of existence. You know, light stuff.
The Love Pavilion is about Mysticism versus Rationalism. Mysticism is embodied by Brian Saxby, an adventurer always reaching for higher places, less-traveled paths, ways of existence not bound to tradition or by society. Saxby is first mentor to our protagonist, then symbolic father figure, then a person to be hunted; Saxby eventually becomes something very dangerous, murderous, a threat to those who would move on past the now-ended war, an animal in the jungle that must be put down. Rationalism is embodied by every other male character with a speaking part, not including our protagonist. Rationalism is shown at its weakest, most pathetically sentimental, most understandable, in Major Reid: a Good Man, a man's man, father to his troop of soldier boys, guardian of masculine codes, tormented by an inchoate guilt over his ambiguous past failures, a leader who views the slaughter of supposed enemies as a pleasant daytime activity, character-building for his young lions, much like the enjoyment he provides them in the evening: the whores who shall visit and pamper them in the Love Pavilion.
The Love Pavilion's protagonist is Tom Brent, who must find his own way between these two paths. He is a compelling, frustrating, wounded, relatable character. Although perhaps most relatable to... men. This is a man's book in that all women are viewed through a certain lens of condescension by its characters. They exist to please and sometimes irritate men. A man's needs include sexual gratification and it is expected that the Malay women shall provide this on demand. Even relatable Tom feels this, at one point asking his boss Greystone - another Rational Man - if he could have a girl assigned to him during his time working the land, a village girl who can cook his meals, handle his laundry, service his sexual needs at end of day. He asks this as casually as a person would ask for a towel to dry themselves after bathing. Only one man in this novel does not think of women this way: the murderous mystic, Brian Saxby.
The Love Pavilion's love interest is Teena Chang, biracial, mistress of the whores of the Love Pavilion, a whore herself. Teena has two faces that she displays to signal how she will be engaging with her clients: her European mood and her Chinese mood. These faces, these moods, are alternately Rational and Mystical. She puts them on and takes them off as she sees fit. Teena, unlike each and every other male character, recognizes that such moods, such ideas, should not be the sole attribute of any person, they should be adopted as needed, and discarded in the same way. Teena's world is a small one, purposely so; a world that is not concerned with the loftier goals of Mysticism and Rationalism. Of course, Tom falls quickly and deeply in love with Teena. Of course, Teena must die. There is only room for binary thinking in the great big world of men, the men who would create and use the Love Pavilion as they see fit....more
Colonel: "What's with the untidiness of these supply lines? Is that garbage I see? The disorder-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING TIDY IT'S EFFECTIVENESS synopsis
Colonel: "What's with the untidiness of these supply lines? Is that garbage I see? The disorder-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING TIDY IT'S EFFECTIVENESS THAT COUNTS NOW GET OFFA MY BACK!"
Girlfriend: "Johnnie, this is our last time together, I'm so sad to leave, my heart is break-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING SAD LET'S FUCK!"
The Troops: "We love you Johnnie Sahib, you see us as individuals, you respect us, we-" Johnnie: "FUCKIN 'A I LOVE YOU GUYS RIGHT BACK NOW LET'S PLAY SOME FUCKIN FOOTY!"
Major: "Tut tut Johnnie, please put on a shirt, this is a senior staff meet-" Johnnie: "FUCK WEARIN SHIRTS!"
Lieutenant: "Our part in the war effort is so successful, your men so dedicated to supporting it, how can I step in your shoes during your leave, can you give me some adv-" Johnnie: "FUCK THIS SO-CALLED WAR EFFORT, MEN FOLLOW MEN NOT NO DAMN WAR!"
Major: "We must be better organized, we must follow chain of command, be flexible, be more efficient-" Johnnie: "FUCK YOUR NEW RULES AND FUCK YOU!" [Pause] "NOW FUCKIN FIRE ME!"
★
review
only Paul Scott could turn what is essentially a non-dramatic study of leadership styles and value systems at work, and at war, into something completely riveting to me. this book gave me so much to think about in regards to my relationships with my staff and colleagues present and past, including the often difficult ones who automatically question authority, and with my boss, who I respect but who does not have the same values as me. so many insights here. this is a book of very little action, set as it is in a World War 2 supply outfit (in India) rather than on the frontlines or in command centers. it is a very thoughtful book with a lot of contemplation about why we do things and how we interact with each other and the ways that we work - and how our personalities determine our approach to work. the prose is wonderful, per usual for the author. the depth of characterization is entirely impressive. I love how Scott's mind works and I loved Johnnie and I loved this book....more
a moody and thoughtful novel about the pressures and problems two young men face after World War II. the deliberate pace, rigorous honesty, and atmospa moody and thoughtful novel about the pressures and problems two young men face after World War II. the deliberate pace, rigorous honesty, and atmospheric prose are all laudable, but it is unlikely that most modern readers - outside of Paul Scott completists like myself - will find much of interest in this book.
but you're not like "most modern readers", are you?? you're better than that. embrace your inner special snowflake and read this poor unsung book! or don't. *shrug*
I walked towards Sloane Street and thought of a child; something substantial, something definite to look forward to: a male child, a projection of yourself in flesh into a future you would not otherwise know.
perhaps not the most admirable of reasons to have a child, eh?
I read for entertainment, for pleasure, rarely for edification. different books bring different pleasures to me. specifically, three sorts of pleasures. a book with a strong, tight, sharp narrative, a narrative like a trap, will hold me captive and I'll think of nothing else but the story of the book. a looser book, say one with a wide sweep and/or a lot of fascinating speculation and/or a world that is being carefully built, will often give me the space to inspire my own book-making: I will think of what it would be like to live in that world, who else would live there, how it would feel; I will think of similar worlds and populate that world with my own ideas, inspired by the book I'm reading. the third sort of pleasure - and I'm not sure if "pleasure" is even the correct word - arises with books whose strongest traits are their interiority, in particular around characterization, and their resonance, mainly due to the book's themes and my connection to those themes. these books force engagement with my own life, and the people who are or who have been in it.
A Male Child provides "pleasure" of the third variety. when contemplating sickly, too-thoughtful Ian Canning, his hesitancy and his questioning of life and his lack of affect, I often thought of myself and my own experiences: of the barriers I've created between me and others, of the frequent futility of "trying to do the right thing" and of truly understanding other people, as well as the quiet, sometimes lonely satisfaction that trying to live the life you want to live can bring. when reading about his friend Alan, an equally kind man who is everything Ian is not (and vice versa) - physically robust, a guy's guy, just about the opposite of an intellectual - I thought of my fraternity years and the surprise I'd feel when realizing a guy I had pegged as nothing more than a simple-minded, horny jock, was not just those things but also a genuinely good person; and the resulting realization that one doesn't have to be thoughtful or clever to be decent or kind. a no-brainer now, many years older, but not so much when I was young and thought I understood everything about everyone.
when reading about Alan's mother, the fascinating monster Mrs. Hurst, and Alan's attempt to be a supportive son to her despite all of her malevolence, I thought of my neighbors: the eccentric older lady and her teen son, the image of them 15 years ago when I first met them, and then what they've become today: an alcoholic old woman disabled physically and mentally yet capable of whining, screaming fits of rage, self-pity, and petty meanness; a no longer young man who has let himself remain captive for those 15 years, looking after her carefully, bathing her, measuring her drinks, the most common word I hear from him: "Patience." it's a heartbreaker; at times I close my window to avoid hearing their voices. and lastly, when letting the theme of A Male Child resonate with me, when considering that theme carefully, I saw myself in Ian again: a character who sees the stories surrounding him, curious as to how those stories began and how they will finish, sometimes fascinated by the narratives, other times bored, or appalled; a person who sees the world and the people in it at a certain remove: characters in the book of life, a world viewed as a novel is read. one can live in that novel alongside those characters, feeling their emotions, and then shut the book, close the window, separate and ensconced. they are just characters after all. distance can be maintained; the world can be safely enclosed; the reader can remain protected - and apart....more
The thought came: In the night a man is more himself.
☽☾
an absorbingly eerie novel with an unexpected narrative.
love may be as important as death; but during war, love is but a weakness.
a man must transform into himself, no matter the cost.
the prologue contains the sole battle; the rest is mere exercise. if "mere" can include wrenching tragedy. a certain nature - a certain mark - within one character is discovered and then fostered by another. the young military recruit Ramsay will follow in his dead brother's dark footsteps. the humane Commandant Craig will do all he can to transform this boy into a warrior, into the sort of person he is not, into the kind of man that war needs. a warrior who will protect the soldiers under his charge; the sort of individual who belongs in the jungle and eschews such human concepts as empathy and kindness. the Mark of the Warrior is a death-mark; it forecasts a lonely, terrible destiny.
Paul Scott's writing is elegant and dreamlike. much as describing one's dream, it is difficult to specify how his effects are achieved. characters think and talk to one another as if they were characters in a play, or as if they doubt their own reality. the prose moves fluidly from terse and manly to gently winding and feminine. Scott plays all sides; each of the characters in his chamber piece is both mysterious and recognizable, including the sole female character.
Sadly, Scott lets down his tense, compelling story with a tragic ending that unfortunately undercuts the whole purpose of the book. still, the novel is a remarkable one in many ways and its themes are fascinating to contemplate....more
BURIED TREASURE ALERT: the works of Paul Scott. he is perhaps most famous for his excellent The Raj Quartet and its 1977 Booker Prize winning follow uBURIED TREASURE ALERT: the works of Paul Scott. he is perhaps most famous for his excellent The Raj Quartet and its 1977 Booker Prize winning follow up novel Staying On (in my opinion, a gentle and wise novel but clearly a lesser work). outside of those classics, it feels like he is practically unknown. i never come across references to him and reviews for his other novels are rather impossible to find. this is a real surprise; his novels are filled with expert characterization, topical & timeless themes (particularly in terms of class conflict, racial tension, and What Makes A Man? and Can Men Ever Truly Be Brothers?) and - because they draw upon his years of experience in India - they are filled with absorbing historical detail.
The Corrida at San Feliu is written with the seriousness of intent and all the confidence, depth of emotion, and ironic humor of a master-class writer. it is a rather short novel, and overall may be considered a minor work. but ah, the riches buried within!
i've been avoiding giving a synopsis of Corrida because it is hard to give a quick description of all the things going on in this little book. its size is compact - but it is larger on the inside than the outside. i suppose, in a long-winded nutshell, you could say it is about some of my favorite literary themes... the gap between reality and true understanding, the distance between individuals, the way we humans mold our memories and perceptions to better deal with the troubling things in our lives, the way we fool ourselves, how the past will always haunt the present and impact the future. it is about a man who is not just at an impasse in his life, he is breaking down, a slow-burning kind of collapse. it is about the power of storytelling and its dangers as well. it is the story of a man and a woman and all the possible, potential permutations of that relationship. it is about a relationship ending. it is about new ways of seeing old things and the flexibility of perspective. it is a tale of death and of love. it is about how you can't go home again and how that home - whatever "home" even means - maybe never existed in the first place.
the structure is purposely distancing. it forces the reader to pay attention, to take their time in getting to the heart of this novel's reason for being. the first section is a straightforward biography of an imaginary writer. that is followed by four very short tales: the first appears to be a little fable about an ill-conceived leopard hunt in africa, the second is about an ill-fated romance in India, the third is about an arrival of a couple at a Spanish villa, the fourth is about a version of that couple arriving at an Indian estate. the second half of the book (sequentially, the sixth "tale") gets to the heart of the matter. a man and his much younger wife are in Spain. he is a writer and she is a trophy. he feels distance between them; he is obsessed with a possible affair she may be having. he thinks upon his life and loves, his family, his wife's past life, the people who have haunted them both. full of dread, he thinks upon the bullfighting at the San Feliu Corrida. characters appear and reappear, they live throughout all the tales in the book, they change and transform and are given different motivations, different outcomes, different perspectives. the narrator's grasping & unimaginative uncle becomes a vindictive leopard hunter in one tale. a virginal young woman is a cold but rather sad object of lust in one story and then her story is retold in another tale... we get to understand her frustrations and anger from different angles, her motivations become clear, her story becomes a genuine tragedy. we see the main couple in question in different forms: young, old, full of hope, full of fear & resentment, glamorous & beautiful, sad & deeply flawed, haunted by their past, looking to their future, locked in stasis. we see all the possibilities of a relationship ending, of life ending - and why this must inevitably come to pass.
the novel ends with a long passage regarding a bullfight at the Corrida. i must admit to having a good deal of trepidation about this sequence. personally, i'm of an opinion that bullfighting is about as tasteful & interesting as fox-hunting. or hunting children. but nevertheless, i stuck with it, and was rewarded with profundity. the narrator imagines the confrontation between bull and tormenters from all angles: from a young bullfighter, from an old one, from the lady that the bullfight is dedicated to, from the bullfighter's assistants, and - most tragically, most empathetically - from the bull itself. and it not all about supplying multiple angles, telling different tales. everything exists on both the level of story and in how these perspectives reflect the lives of the novel's characters. this passage - well the novel itself as a whole, the way that actions and perspectives and meaning change, flow into each other, become interpreted as story, become transformed... it is all such a remarkably multi-leveled accomplishment.
here is a relatively minor passage concerning a relatively minor character... note the fluidity of perspective, the collapsing of time, the startling movement from a life about to happen to sudden death and finally a terribly unknowable portrait of futility and sorrow:
Alone with Leela he said, 'Will you be my wife?' And she replied, 'I will be whatever you want me to be,' and knelt in front of him so that he experienced a sensation of being both mocked and worshipped, and wondered whether God too was alive to the ambiguity of such gestures. She had her mother's, not her father's bones. The creamy, only slightly tinted flesh was stretched fine, almost transparently over them. It seemed to Craddock that like so many Indian women she was built for burning. Dry and brittle in the body she would be gone in the first lick of flame, all except her eyes through which so far she had seen nothing of the world; through which, now, looking up at him, she conveyed to him something of her great, untapped capacity for living. Through those eyes he was aware of a similar capacity in himself and of immense reserves of energy.
All my life, he thought, I have conserved, stored up against an occasion of expenditure on some act I could be proud of and thankful for. He made her rise and keeping hold her small hands kissed them, as six months later, far away in their place of exile of their short marriage he kissed them as they were clenched, cold, sickly-sweet smelling, in the room where she lay dead of a cup of milk into which she had poured powdered glass, as if only the most agonizing end could adequately settle the reckoning of her brief encounter with the cruel world beyond the walls and garden of old Lady Brague's embattled, haunted bungalow. To die she had put on a simple cotton saree, made a pyre of the European clothes she had tried so hard to grace, and set light to them. The ashes, like her body, were cold, the bungalow deserted, the servants fled, the Mahwari Hills silent behind veils of mist that had melted on his eye-lids as he climbed the path calling her name and getting no answer, so that entering the darkened room he was already aware of the need to weep.
(view spoiler)[message 24: by mark 27 minutes ago i can't narrow it down, that's an unfair demand! nor am i lurker. but hey, i'm awake at 3:18 am so (view spoiler)[message 24: by mark 27 minutes ago i can't narrow it down, that's an unfair demand! nor am i lurker. but hey, i'm awake at 3:18 am so that's reason enough:
Absolute Beginners The Raj Quartet Little, Big Thin Red Line Catcher in the Rye (sorry, haters)
message 25: by karen, future RA queen (new) 12 minutes ago at least two of those are out of print in this country, so tell me why i should be jealous/ go on, what's so great about thoooose books?
message 26: by mark (new) 3 minutes ago OUT OF PRINT, WTF?! that is very upsetting. which two?
i ramble on and on and on about Absolute Beginners, Little Big, Thin Red Line, and Catcher in my reviews for those novels... so i'm feeling rather shy all of a sudden about rambling on and on and on again about them.
but The Raj Quartet! no review... so now i can really ramble on, yeah! but first let me pour myself a glass of 3:42am wine. perhaps it will get me back to sleep (unlikely).
message 27: by mark (new) 55 minutes ago okay wine sounded terrible all of a sudden, so some microwave hot chocolate instead (very classy). here goes...
1. do you like to read extensively detailed, dense, dramatic historical fiction that does not stint on characterization or slow-burning narrative action? do you like to read about colonial india, specifically colonial india during the troubled handover from the british raj back to indian control, and then of course the horrible partitioning? i do. but why exactly? well, let's see...
2. do you like to read about class systems and their impact - on a systemic level and on an intimate, personal level as well? i sure do. class is the basis of so many, er, classic english novels, but there is just something so drastic and of course so racially-based as the class system of colonial india. the class system becomes so palpable, so real, so almost on the verge of breaking down because of its inherent, disgusting unfairness when race is brought into the mix. class in literature that depicts colonial india is also powerful to me on a personal level. i'm not sure i can explain this in words that are inoffensive. i'm a person who loves classic english (and early american) literature. i eat it all up. and yet there is always a side of me - and i acknowledge that this may be due to my mixed-race status - that shouts at the back of my mind when reading those novels: ohyouthinkitssohardyouspoiledupperclasstwit/ youneedlesslyresentfullowerclassknob you'restillwhitewhitewhite andsohavesomanymoreautomaticadvantagesmorethanyou'lleverrealize, justshutthefuckupwithyourwhiningalready! i don't get that voice when i'm reading about colonial india. class analysis within this subject is stark: you are brown or you are white, that determines your class, and in the end it doesn't matter what your level of education is, how much money you have, whatever... there will always be an automatic divide based on where you were born and what color your skin happens to be. that starkness makes it so much more relevant to me. and on top of that, the author also explores intragroup class distinctions within the races depicted.
3. do you like to read about tragic romance? this one has one of the best examples of its kind. the lovers are so warmly, honestly depicted. what happens to them is so disturbing... and it reverberates to inform the rest of this epic and nearly all the major characters within it.
4. do you like your historical novels to relate history on a personal scale? do you like to see how great events impact folks who are not movers & shakers but simply caught up in a grand design not of their making?
5. do you like old-fashioned villains but yet long for completely realistic, three-dimensional characters who have understandable motivations as they continue to do the horrible things they do? can the two be combined? Raj Quartet has a couple outstanding examples.
6. do you want to read the perspective of older folks, flitting in and out of potential senility, considered useless by the younger generation, dreamy and strange and not-quite-getting-it? this novel has my favorite example of the kind. she is not idealized. she is not a fountain of wisdom. she is heartbreaking.
7. do you like poetry in prose form? for such an elephantine undertaking, one full of extensive historical detail and given wide-screen scope, The Raj Quartet is written by an author who knows how to turn a phrase. a looooooong phrase. Paul Scott is an amazing writer. he knows how to construct sentences that make you pause and wonder at how language can convey the most ambiguous of feelings, the beauty in a tiny detail, the strangeness of a foreign setting, the way a place can actually look and feel and smell and taste.
8. do you like strong women? good, so do i. this book is full of them. sometimes they are heroes, in one case a villain (such a black & white word, but it fits), but mainly they are just people who are trying to do the best they can. they are not "strong" in a wish-fulfillment sense of the word. they are strong in a way that is real, that is brave because of their personal and historical context, that is worthy of respect because of their need to define themselves according to their own personal context.
9. do you like intricate narratives? say no more, this is royalty as far as intricacy is concerned. as a reader, you better pay attention. characters come and go, but they are not dropped. actions impact actions and those actions, that impact, unspools in all directions, ever-widening but sometimes submerged, sometimes leading to a dead end, but always connected in a way that is so complex and so subtle, so small and so large.
10. do you want an excellent BBC adaptation of your favorite english novel, preferably in miniseries format? hey, you got that too. watch this AFTER you read the series though, well at least that's the way i did it and it was awesome. so awesome that i put off breaking up with a pretentious asshole simply because we hadn't finished the miniseries yet and he owned the, um, vhs tapes. he was trying to "educate" me. i waited to break up with him until after the last episode. well, i guess i was the asshole in that case.
Staying On won the Booker Prize but I just don't get why it got the prize instead of any of the books within the The Raj Quartet. it is basically an aStaying On won the Booker Prize but I just don't get why it got the prize instead of any of the books within the The Raj Quartet. it is basically an addendum to that amazing piece of literature. still, a nice addendum....more
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