It is unfair at this late date to introduce Nicholas Mosley as the son of Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley the younger has forged a life wholly unlike his father’s. He served the Allied cause in World War II and several terms as a Liberal member in the House of Lords. He worked against apartheid in South Africa as part of the Community of the Resurrection. And he is a gifted writer, as evidenced by novels like Impossible Object, which was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize, and Hopeful Monsters, which won the 1991 Whitbread Award. Yet the specter of his father’s radicalism has trailed Nicholas Mosley all these years. The extent of the elder Mosley’s commitment to Fascism is unclear. His son has speculated that he enjoyed the spotlight but was committed to a different way of life. He sought to prevent Britain from entering World War II, preferring instead to direct Germany’s aggressions toward Russia. His father never liked Hitler, Mosley says, and that he had no ties to high-ranking members of the Nazi party. Late in the war, Churchill even arranged for Oswald and his wife to live under house arrest. Nicholas was allowed to visit, a liberty which assumes little threat on the part of either party.

If he hadn’t practiced such an uncompromising style of writing, Nicholas Mosley’s name might be less closely linked to his father’s sins. The scholar Shiva Rahbaran calls him “one of the most controversial contemporary novelists in the English language.” His experimental tendencies no doubt limited his readership. In Impossible Object, one of his finest books, Mosley foregoes conventional narrative structure in favor of loosely related vignettes. The reader may discern links, but as Mosley has said, “The reader could, and would make whatever he wanted of it.” He speaks to the fluidity of the novel’s separate narrative threads in his memoir, Efforts and Truth, when he writes, “The fifth story of Impossible Object is about a man (the narrator of the fourth story?) who has got fed up with the sort of life he has got stuck in and goes off to look for a new girlfriend.” His more experimental offerings have been linked to the anti-novel/nouveau roman strains of fiction which emerged from Europe. Others, including the newly released A Garden of Trees, are tied up with questions of faith and doubt – questions of substance, to be sure, but something apart from the main thrust of contemporary English language fiction. Never one to back away from unconventional ideas, Mosley has described his experience writing novels as “forward memory.” That is to say, he writes about an event in a fictional context, only to watch it unfold later in his actual life. His other theories of the novel are more accessible. “There is a sense,” Mosley writes in Efforts at Truth, “in which novels are a smokescreen put up to deal with the near-desperate pains of reality: there is a sense in which they are not-quite-so-desperate efforts to break through the smokescreens that seem to be put up by reality itself.”

A Garden of Trees arrives from Dalkey Archive with Nicholas Mosley’s reputation as a writer fully formed. This is a curious state of affairs; he wrote the book in 1949 and 1950. It is natural enough for a writer to look back at early works, both published and unpublished. James Salter revisited his second novel, The Arm of Flesh, after forty years of dissatisfaction with it. He made such extensive revisions that the result, Cassada, was practically a different book. Peter Mathiessen took three novels (Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River and Bone by Bone) he had published over a span of ten years and pared them down to a single volume, Shadow Country, which was awarded the National Book Award in 2008. In Mosley’s case, A Garden of Trees was to be his second novel, but it was received coolly by publishers. David Garnett of Rupert Hart-Davis read the book and pronounced it a failure. The conversation was “bad and dead,” the story rambling, and that “publication in its present form would be a mistake.” The book was finally accepted by Weidenfeld & Nicholson after what Mosley describes as a “lengthy round of publishers.” Both author and publisher were lukewarm about the novel by that time. Mosley was far along on his next book, Rainbearers, and chose to direct his energies there. A Garden of Trees went in the drawer, where it remained until now, when it is finally between covers – handsome ones – thanks to Dalkey Archive. There is no evidence to suggest that Mosley has fundamentally altered the original text. In a postscript to the book, he writes that, “Perhaps now, in this overt age of celebrity, there might be some recognition of the strength of inwardness rather than clamor.” It is an admirable aim, but also a very generous reading of the novel in question.

A Garden of Trees is not Mosley in experimental mode. That came later, and the authority with which he presented those experiments was formidable. He is far less commanding here. A searching quality pervades the book. Perhaps this is to blame for the novel’s callow feel. The reader could view that same quality as a reflection of postwar England’s need to reorder priorities, to go from a daily life rich with moral purpose to a less remarkable, more stable existence.

The novel centers on a group of four friends: the unnamed narrator; Peter and Annabelle, who are brother and sister; and Marius, who exerts a powerful attraction over the other three. He particularly appeals to Annabelle, with whom he has a brief affair and fathers a child. The narrator is drawn into their circle after encountering Marius at a political rally. It is unclear how involved Marius is in the proceedings, but the narrator follows him and eventually strikes up a conversation. Marius is a powerful, mysterious presence. He reveals little of himself in conversation. His occupation is unclear, though his circle of friends and acquaintances readily offer, among other things, a place to sleep. Peter is glib and tortured, disaffected with everything from the time he spent at Oxford to organized religion. His experience in the army is rewarding in that he finds “simple people doing simple things that are supposed to be unpleasant.” If that sounds condescending, he’s less tedious than the description suggests. In fact his is the best dialogue in the novel, consistently witty, occasionally weighty and delivered in the proper dosage.

Mosley concedes that the dialogue is often dead, but reading it is no easier for that admission. Take an excerpt of a conversation between Annabelle and the narrator:

“The world is not dead to us.”

“Of course not.”

“What is this hopelessness?”

“Mixing eternity with the future. The future is what will happen, beyond our control, beyond our living. That is what is the world to those who work. Eternity is what might happen, what is in our control, what is in our dying. We can create it.”

“Hopelessness is hunger and drudgery,” Annabelle said, “it is nothing else.”

“With hunger and drudgery there is the future. There is always hope. Where there is no hunger or drudgery there is also the hope of the present. This is the same as eternity. There is only hopelessness when drudgery looks to the present and idleness looks to the future.”

These dense, artificial passages are still more glaring thanks to a number of clever exchanges and pithy, even aphoristic observations throughout the book. Marius’s wife, wasting away in a hospital bed, remarks that, “It is easier to talk than to believe.” On another occasion, Marius tells Annabelle, “Suffering is when you can’t even die.” Annabelle says, “How pompous, darling.” Marius, untroubled, says, “Yes,” and though Mosley doesn’t say so, it’s hard to imagine the remark coming with anything but a smirk.

Mosley does create a spell, albeit a fragile one, via the narrator’s three friends and their efforts to establish a world apart. But his insistence upon keeping Marius, the center of their little group, so cryptic and mysterious, robs the narrative of much needed momentum. They separate and confront, each in their own time, questions of faith. This brings Father Jack Manners to the stage, and while he is central to the group’s spiritual development, he lends a bloodless feel to the proceedings. The book’s final pages are all the more remarkable for that. Mosley gives us a thrilling picture of Marius’s last days, one in which he appears charismatic and noble. It suggests an appeal only seen in fragments throughout the book, one so strong that Marius could credibly be the pole star for many lives.

This novel was unmistakably a step in Mosley’s progression as a writer, but it’s clear he simply doesn’t trust himself here as fully as he did later. He treats the titular image and metaphor subtly for much of the book, allowing his young protagonists to tinker with the discrete worlds they attempt to create. Gradually he draws closer, allowing the narrator to remark that, “A fruit tree…is where it all started, I suppose, in a garden of trees.” Later he goes further still, when Peter’s father remarks to the narrator that, “It seems to me you are obsessed with the Garden of Eden. You insist on trying to recreate it and at the same time insist on making the original mistakes.” These false notes are particularly hard to ignore given Mosley’s elegant prose and the basic soundness of his conceit here. A Garden of Trees is not the best of Nicholas Mosley, but that’s not to say it’s wholly without merit. The best of Mosley is a high bar indeed.

- John McIntyre

All original content copyright John McIntyre, 2013.

He lived this life until he died a painful death at the age of fifty-five and entered the gates of his new life, his Jerusalem.

Raymond Raynes was a tall thin man, increasingly gaunt in his last years, a monk who ate little and slept little, but who loved a great deal, loved through his prayers and his time spent caring for others. He changed lives in the countryside of England and in the slums of South Africa, and he changed lives in Denver, Dallas, and San Francisco when he came to speak on his American missions. He wanted to stir up the Church, to wake up the Body of Christ. Why? So that they could see and know God.

Today, Palm Sunday, we re-member Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. He rides a lowly donkey, yet the people greet him as a king. Hosanna, they cry. Hosanna to the Son of David. Jesus will be their new king, they think. They learn differently in the following week. We tell this story, act it out even as we process, holding our palm fronds, around the nave and sing, All glory laud and honor… By telling the story we draw closer so that we may know God better.

It is a dramatic moment when the Lord of All Creation so humbly enters this city of man. Born in a stable to humble parents, Jesus of Nazareth lived among a persecuted people, a poor people. After his time in the desert, after his baptism by John, he gathered his followers and spoke the truth to the crowds. Often the truth was too harsh and they fled, and often the truth today is too harsh, and we flee. But, as our preacher said this morning, those who knew him stayed, and those who know him today, stay too. When he said that we must eat his body and drink his blood, many left. Just so, many leave today. But those who knew him recognized him as the Messiah, the long awaited one, the Lord of All Creation. Those who know him today, those who worship faithfully with sacrament and scripture week after week – those folks understand who he is, the long promised savior.

I have an icon on my wall that shows this scene at the gates of Jerusalem. The colors are vivid – golds and greens and reds. We re-member and re-fashion, re-creating the true glory of this humble scene, this moment in history. Our preacher today spoke of those palm branches. He said that in this arid land only the rich would have palm trees. The palm branch, with its green fronds, meant water was near. So it is particularly poignant and meaningful that children waved their branches of life-giving water and royal privilege, before this humble man riding on a donkey.

In church, as I gazed upon the purple-draped chancel – so much purple! – the giant green palm branches that rose twenty plus feet on either side of the altar filled me with joy, the hope of Easter. They arced gently, nearly reaching the purple cloths over the crucifix. They said, soon, soon, it will be finished. Soon, soon, all will be renewed, reborn. Soon, soon, we shall be resurrected.

How do I know this? Because I have tried to be faithful in Sacrament and Scripture. I have worshiped regularly, have received the Body and Blood into my own body. I have listened to the sermons and the lessons that help me know God. I have listened for God’s voice in prayer. There is no magic involved in any of this. No luck. Maybe some grace and a little blessing and some angels urging me along the way. But through simple faithfulness we can know him. There is no other way. There are no shortcuts.

My novel, The Magdalene Mystery, is to be released in mid-May. It is the story of a quest to find the real Mary Magdalene, the woman who was the first to see the resurrected Christ. She came to the tomb out of faithfulness, doing what needed to be done. She didn’t expect to find the stone rolled away or the the man she thought was the gardener speak to her. But when he called her name, Mary, she knew him. Because she was faithful.

Father Raynes was faithful, and he taught us how to be faithful, how to know God. Like Christ Jesus, he tells the truth and not everyone wants to hear it. Some of his demands are difficult, some are inconvenient. But truth is the only way to life. As part of the Body of Christ, the Church, I shall be ever grateful for his stirring up, for his call to be faithful.  For in being faithful, we know God, and in knowing God, we live.

I am so honored to type these words. It is as though as I type the words enter my heart and mind in sacramental fashion. So I have spent a lot of time of late with Father Raynes, with him in South Africa, with him when he was Superior of the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, England, with him as he chatted about the faith in some of the great homes in rural England. (“House parties,” one retreatant called them, “all gin and confession…. they were wonderful…”)_

Our small publishing group hopes to produce more of these out-of-print books that tell of our Anglican way of Christianity. The more I live and experience Anglo-Catholicism, the more I am fulfilled by its rituals, sacraments, theology, and the more I appreciate our place in history and the telling of the Gospel.

Which brings me to interpretations, and ways of expressing the Incarnation and what it means. It brings me to the Gospel – what is it, what does it mean for me, for my family, for my community, my nation, the world. There are numerous answers to these questions, numerous interpretations.

Just as there are many interpretations of sacred texts. There are, our preacher reminded us today and I had to smile at its appropriateness for me at this time, interpretations of interpretations.

And this all leads to the question of truth. Can we know it, does it exist, are we merely beings of impulses and instincts. Is science so very incompatible with religion. I think not. They support one another.

My fifth novel, I hope and believe, will be released in May. The Magdalene Mystery asks these questions of interpretation, of truth. Can we know Mary Magdalene? Can we know who she really was? This question leads to the next, can we know what happened in that first century of the Early Church? Which of course leads us to Holy Scriptures and the challenge posed by many doubters in the last fifty years, can we know that a man named Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead? Indeed, can we even know that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived and walked the earth?

I suppose much of this quest for truth is personal for me, since my father left his Christian faith and his pastorate in the sixties’ upheaval of doubt. He believed what he read, what so-called New Testament scholars were writing. The Jesus Seminar soon “validated” his new creed of unbelief. American culture, drunk with freedom from moral restraints, and celebrating the birth control pill, launched into a party that is still going on (the devastation caused by the sexual revolution is a topic for another day). My parents read themselves out and away from their living faith and into something sterile and self-serving.

So today I type quickly, my fingers tapping the keys. Father Raynes’s telling of the truth will be one more expression that will feed a culture starving for the real thing. Of course each of us must read, evaluate, and judge. That’s what free will is all about. But this biography that seems to be emerging through my fingertips, like The Faith, encourages each of us to decide on our own and not be swayed by media and false testimony. Father Raynes’s words point to true authorities, not bestselling journalists and sensational novelists and fads. His words inspire us to embrace the traditional morality of the Gospel, to see that right and wrong do exist, that selfishness is not an admirable trait. His words encourage us to have backbone, to stand up and be counted in our world today. His words encourage us to meet God and enjoy him forever.

And my little novel, soon to be in print, hopefully will do the same thing in a different way, with a love story set in Rome and Provence, and a mysterious quest with clues in breathtaking basilicas. A predator stalks, and folks spread lies like spiders spinning webs.

So I must get back to my typing and back to the joy of telling, retelling, and telling once again, making all these words come alive on the page.

Man Booker judge Amanda Foreman explains that until the very last day, it was too close to call who had won this year’s prize, which went to Hilary Mantel for Bring Up The Bodies.

By Amanda Foreman

Click here to read the rest of this story

Avid readers of McElroy–I know they are few, but out there–will find the following a handy resource for tracking the literary background against which McElroy sees himself. Where I can, I provide a few notes about the work in question.

Source key

NN=“Neural Neighborhoods and Other Concrete Abstracts” (1974 essay by McElroy)

JC=Joshua Cohen’s audio conversation with McElroy for a Triple Canopy event

SS=”Socrates on the Shore” (2002 essay by McElroy in Substances, Revue Francaise d’Études Américaines 93: 7-20.)

ACH=Tom LeClair’s interview (in Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists; This book includes interviews with Stanley Elkin, William Gass, Don Delillo, E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, etc.)

BM=Bradford Morrow’s interview in Conjunctions (1987)

MC=Marc Chénetier, Flore Chevaililer, and Antoine Cazé’s 2001 interview, “Some Bridge of Meaning,” in Sources, fall 2001

The Bookshelf

Prose fiction

Bill Wilson, Why I Don’t Write Like Franz Kafka (1977; 133 ps.)

This collection of stories, written using language and viewpoints partly medical and scientific in nature, shows certain similarities to J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), at least in its concern with pathological and modified human bodies. Accordingly, Wilson’s prose’s register of bio/medical terminology reflects his concern with pathology: entelechy; neoteny; seriatim; naevus; pelagic; tunicates; enuresis; cortisone; hypospadias; pemmican; adrenergics; sigmoidoscopy; saprozoic. These are not stories for everyone. They are brutal and detached from human intimacy, incisive as a surgeon’s scalpel’s cuts. Think, if you have read it, of J.M. Coetzee’s short fiction The Vietnam Project, comprising the first half of Dusklands (1974).

Charles Newman, New Axis: or the ‘Little Ed’ Stories (1966; 175 ps.) (NN)

Tales from a small MidWestern community that interlock, intertwine, interlace. Each story conveys the experience and POV of a single character who is glimpsed obliquely by others in other stories. This ‘interlocking points-of-view’ technique, while it forms an integral part of many, many novels, stands out particularly in The Sound and the Fury (1929) by Faulkner, Impossible Object by Mosley, and in A Smuggler’s Bible by McElroy. Charles Newman was the founding editor of TriQuarterly where some of William S. Wilson’s and Joseph McElroy’s short work first appeared.

Nicolas Mosley, Impossible Object (1968; 219 ps.) (NN)

‘One of the most fascinating novels of the last generation,’ according to McElroy. No brief summary could do this book, which consists of eight short stories alternating with intensely bewildering three-page intercalary chapters, justice, successfully characterize the paradoxical wager at the heart of the book. ‘Words were a vulgarity. One’s duty was to love those whom one loves’ (175).

If you don’t know Mosley at all but are curious, you might find this website of John Banks, with interviews with Mosley, to be a useful resource.

After Impossible Object I quickly read Catastrophe Practice (1979), itself a triumph of hope and positivity, despite its ‘theatre of the absurd’ qualities which exist alongside Mosley’s incisive critical essays describing his vision and ambitions; and alongside a novella which concludes the book. American literature scholar Tom LeClair: ‘N. Mosley is a throwback, a modernist mastodon whose project for fiction surpasses in grandiosity that of any American writer I know.’ Dalkey has a large selection of Mosley’s books in print; recommended to explore them a little here.

Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas (1811) (NN) (free text here)

Thrilling, fantastic, and awesome. A two-hundred-year-old text that is just as modern and entertaining now as ever. It’s about one upright citizen’s insistence on justice in the face of corrupt officials. I’ve heard that for Ragtime (1974) E.L. Doctorow borrowed  some situational elements from this short novella.

Herman Melville, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ (1853) (JC) (free e-book)

If you’ve read this story, you know how unforgettable, eloquent, and bewildering it is–among the best stories ever written. If you are unfamiliar with this story, read or listen to it this week. Free audio version available from Librivox.

Michel Butor, Degrees (1960) (NN; 351 ps.)

This nouveau roman centers on a Paris school teacher who devises a project to meticulously record the totality of what happens to certain of his colleagues and pupils. Because his project attempts totality, it fails and he loses his psychic stability. Apparently an inspiration for A Smuggler’s Bible (1966), McElroy’s first novel.

Michel Butor, Mobile (1962; 319 ps.)

Not your typical travel book! Highly idiosyncratic and elliptical in its form, Mobile represents Butor’s experience of traveling in the U.S.A. when Eisenhower’s highway project was not yet old. This book makes extreme demands on the attention of the reader and provides singular rewards.

Knut Hamsun, Mysteries (1892; 340 ps.) (ACH)

Early modernist, experimental text that was praised early on by Henry Miller. About a man named Nagel who turns up one day in a small Norwegian village and stirs things up a bit.

Norman Mailer

Mailer is a somewhat neglected author today, but he was a public intellectual and a strong voice in the time of his celebrity. But what of Mailer ought one read?; not all Mailer is good Mailer, there is too much Mailer. Why Are We in Vietnam?, Of a Fire on the Moon, and parts of An American Dream are written with an incandescence that very few writers can equal. ‘The Man Who Studied Yoga?’ is a very good short story (in Advertisements for Myself).

William H. Gass, ‘In the Heart of the Heart of the Country’ (c. 1960, 1964 ?) (NN)

Gass said once that he self-consciously composed this story on the structure of a musical composition. It attempts to convey the monotony of living in a small MidWestern town through repetitions, the very lack of action, lack of plot. Sound interesting? Gass’s language makes this, and the short story collection of which it is a part, a masterpiece of American literature.

Paul Metcalfe, Patagoni (1971?)

According to McElroy (‘Neural Neighborhoods’): ‘a short history of North American Henry Ford and River Rouge is coupled with a rambling trip into South America under a weird metaphor of brain and body.’ This Jargon Press publication is an unusually beautiful, and somewhat rare, book-object.

Harold Brodkey

The story ‘State of Grace,’ Brodkey’s first published story, available in the collection First Love and Other Sorrows, is beautiful, eloquent, and touching; it even involves some plausible time travel, a real kick-in-the-pants. I have not read any of Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, but this beautiful appreciation of Brodkey surely makes me want to.

Jerome Charyn, A Child’s History of the Bronx (NN)

An excerpt from this unpublished novel was published in Statements 1, edited by Ronald Suzenick, of the Fiction Collective. From what I can tell it’s a playful, ribald colonial historiography (17th, 18th century) of Manhattan. Not something I recommend going the extra mile to consult.

Italo Calvino, “Priscilla,” from t zero

Imagine a cell thinking through how it feels to divide into or to combine with another cell, as in meiosis and mitosis. Calvino has done just that.

D.H. Lawrence, Selected Stories: (BM)

‘The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter’; ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’; ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’; ‘The Prussian Officer’

Aidan Higgins, Langrishe, Go Down (1966) (NN)

Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper

Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

Uwe Johnson, The Third Book about Achim (NN)

Von Dodderer, The Demons (ACH)

Henry James, What Maisie Knew (free here)

Henry Miller, Colossus of Maroussi (1958)(ACH)

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962) (ACH)

Paul Valéry, Eupalinos, or the Architect (SS)

Günter Grass, Dog Years (ACH)

William Golding, The Inheritors (ACH)

J.G. Ballard, Crash

Hortense Callisher (NN)

Leonard Michaels (NN)

Donald Barthelme (numerous)

Poetry

Galway Kinnell, The Book of Nightmares (1971; 75 ps.) (ACH)

Dedicated to the children of the author (‘Maud and Fergus’), this collection of ten poems deploys an inventiveness of language and evokes an intensity of pathos that are rarely attained by even the best poets. The first printing by Houghton Mifflin includes amazing illustrations as frontispieces to each of the poems. This tiny book might be said to constitute some of the finest American poetry from the latter half of the 20th century.

Gary Snyder, “Good Things That Can Be Said for the Iron Age” (1970) (NN)

Retrieved from the vast Internet, here, the poem itself:

A ringing tire iron dropped on the pavement
Whang of a saw brusht on limbs
the taste of rust

A.R. Ammons, Collected Poems (ACH)

Philosophy and other

E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973) (ACH)

An awesome book written with strong and pragmatic convictions. As an economist Schumacher worked with Britain’s National Coal Board for twenty years. On the one hand, Schumacher’s book is a vehement critique of econometrics, and on the other it’s a re-definition of what economists and human beings ought to use to evaluate, understand, and (from a policy perspective) guide behavior. Schumacher’s assertion that ‘We must learn to think in terms of an articulated structure that can cope with a multiplicity of small-scale units’ (80) informed the writing of Women and Men. Perhaps this is the only book I know whose back cover identifies its proper classification as ‘Economics / New Age.’

John Ruskin (ACH)

J.M. Keynes (ACH)

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)

Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Thinking, Dwelling’ (1950 or ’54; mentioned on KCRW’s Bookworm)

Eugène Marais, The Soul of the White Ant and The Soul of the Ape (ACH)

Paul Kammerer, The Law of Seriality (ACH)

(This text is to my knowledge not available in English translation. Read detailed summaries in English of it here and here.)

All posts on this site about Joseph McElroy are archived here.

Frigyes Karinthy (1887) – I admit to never having read any of his novellas but his short story Chains launched the concept of six degrees of separation which has always fascinated me.

Eric Arthur Blair better known as George Orwell (1903) – His novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was one of the first truly dystopian novels I read. Animal Farm was required reading one year and I read it several times over after that. He is one of those authors that I found inspiration from.

Nicholas Mosley (1923) – I admit to not knowing him by name despite him having several published titles. As I scanned through his credits I realised I had read one of his novels entitled Children of Darkness and Light which was an interesting look at religion and politics.

Eric Carle (1929) – So many beautiful works by this author and illustrator. My favourites include The Very Hungary Caterpillar, The Mixed Up Chameleon, The Very Lonely Firefly, The Very Busy Spider… and many, many, many more!

Philip Nicholson (1940) took the pen name A. J. Quinnell when his novel Man on Fire was in the process of being published to keep him identity a secret. He shares J.K. Rowlings agent. His novel has been made into a movie twice. I have seen the 2004 film but have never read any of the novels.

What about you? Do you share your birthday with any famous writers?

Related articles

• June 25 in history (homepaddock.wordpress.com)
• Happy Birthday, George Orwell!!! (kidzrockinc.co)
• This day in 1903: George Orwell born (poumista.wordpress.com)

841  Battle of Fontenay.

1530  At the Diet of Augsburg the Augsburg Confession was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor by the Lutheran princes and Electors of Germany.

1678  Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman awarded a doctorate of philosophy.

1741  Maria Theresa of Austria was crowned ruler of Hungary.

1786  Gavriil Pribylov discovered St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

1788  Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1876  Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1880 Potatau Te Wherowhero of Waikato, the first Maori king died.

1900 Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, was born (d. 1979).

1903 George Orwell (pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), British writer, was born  (d. 1950).

1903 Anne Revere, American actress, was born  (d. 1990).

1906  Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw shot and killed prominent architect Stanford White.

1913  American Civil War veterans began arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913.

1913  Cyril Fletcher, British comedian, was born  (d. 2005).

1923 Nicholas Mosley, British writer, was born.

1925 June Lockhart, American actress, was born.

1928 Peyo, Belgian illustrator, was born  (d. 1992).

1938  Dr. Douglas Hyde was inaugurated the first President of Ireland.

1939  Clint Warwick, English musician (The Moody Blues), was born (d. 2004).

1944  World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic Countries, began.

1945 Carly Simon, American singer, was born.

1947  The Diary of Anne Frank was published.

1948  The Berlin airlift began.

1949  Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny, was released in theatres.

1950  The Korean War began with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.

1952  Tim Finn, New Zealand singer/songwriter, was born.

1961 Ricky Gervais, English comedian, actor, writer, was born.

1962 Phill Jupitus, English comedian and broadcaster, was born.

1967  First live global satellite television programme – Our World

1975  Mozambique achieved independence.

1981  Microsoft was restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

1982 Greece abolished the head shaving of recruits in the military.

1991  Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993  Kim Campbell was chosen as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1996  The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

1997  An unmanned Progress spacecraft collidedwith the Russian space station, Mir.

1997   The Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat erupted resulting in the deaths of 19 people.

1998  In Clinton v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court decided that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was unconstitutional.

2006 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

It seems we literary types have been less interested in putting things on Wikipedia than other people. This is why, for example, if you search for nanorobotics you get an article with sixty-two sources and various essays within essays, but if you search for In the Heart of the Heart of the Country you get a did-you-mean list of options headed by a Paul and Linda McCartney effort and the 1992 worldwide smash Achy Breaky Heart.

Incidentally, Achy Breaky Heart was the first song to ever go triple platinum in Australia. Wow, Australia, what were you thinking? One in every eighty Australians bought a copy of Achy Breaky Heart. May the world remind you of that fact the next time you are trying to claim cultural superiority over New Zealand. One in eighty, dudes. One in eighty.

Anyway, Impossible Object. It’s rather good actually. What at first appears to be a series of short stories starts to weld (do I mean weld?) into a larger, stranger whole. (Do I mean meld?) (Is meld a word?) (Is weld a word?) (Is word a word?) (Shall I start again?) (OK)

Impossible Object appears, at first, to be a short story collection, and in one sense, it is. At least some of the sections are stories written by characters in other sections of the novel. Or about themselves at different parts of the book. Some of the writers use ridiculously over-the-top similes. Others don’t. For example, toward the end of the book we find out that the first chapter is a short story written by one of the characters of the last chapter in which he exagerated the seriousness of an incident that happened during his previous marriage. That sounds more confusing than it is. The stories slowly start to carry echoes and whispers of each other until they become a larger whole. Ultimately though, these interlocking stories don’t quite fit together. In Impossible Object, Mosley created an Escher drawing in text; an impossible object. It is a bloody good trick.

It makes you wonder what all that death-of-the-novel nonsense was in the Seventies (and in every decade since, obviously). This novel is vital, in both senses of the word. It is experimental, but experimental for a reason: Mosley was attempting to capture the essence of what it means to write about love.

Parts of Impossible Object do appear slightly dated (today’s novelists tend to hide their university educations behind a wall of dirt or irony) but is actually all the better for this. The novel is a much more noble project than the showy pyrotechnics of, say, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Here the narrative is pulled apart and twisted to imitate the workings of the heart, not to disguise the fact it hasn’t got one. I guess the word noble is dated. I guess I’m dated. I’ll shut up now.

This is definitely one for your to-read piles.

Out of print: Widely available second-hand.

Directed by Joseph Losey, The sound of a car crash shatters the stillness of the country night and brings Stephen, an Oxford don, from his work to investigate. He finds two of his students,William, an English nobleman who is dead, and Anna, an Austrian princess suffering from shock. Carrying Anna to his house, Stephen recalls recent events involving the students. During a tutoring session Stephen learns of William’s love for Anna, and Stephen, whose wife, Rosalind, expects their third child and who senses the approach of middle age, also is strongly attracted to her. Stephen’s frustration is increased by his unsatisfactory attempt to rekindle the passion he once shared with Francesca and the knowledge that Anna is having an affair with Charley. Stephen’s feelings for Anna can only end in tragedy for them and those around them.

841  Battle of Fontenay.

1530  At the Diet of Augsburg the Augsburg Confession was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor by the Lutheran princes and Electors of Germany.

Reading of the Confessio Augustana by Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530

1678  Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman awarded a doctorate of philosophy.

1741  Maria Theresa of Austria was crowned ruler of Hungary.

1786  Gavriil Pribylov discovered St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

1788  Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1876  Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1880 Potatau Te Wherowhero of Waikato, the first Maori king died.

1900 Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, was born (d. 1979).

1903 George Orwell (pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), British writer, was born  (d. 1950).

1903 Anne Revere, American actress, was born  (d. 1990).

1906  Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw shot and killed prominent architect Stanford White.

1913  American Civil War veterans began arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913.

1913  Cyril Fletcher, British comedian, was born  (d. 2005).

 1923 Nicholas Mosley, British writer, was born.

1925 June Lockhart, American actress, was born.

1928 Peyo, Belgian illustrator, was born  (d. 1992).

 1938  Dr. Douglas Hyde was inaugurated the first President of Ireland.

1939  Clint Warwick, English musician (The Moody Blues), was born (d. 2004).

1944  World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic Countries, began.

1945 Carly Simon, American singer, was born.

1947  The Diary of Anne Frank was published.

1948  The Berlin airlift began.

1949  Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny, was released in theatres.

1950  The Korean War began with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.

1952  Tim Finn, New Zealand singer/songwriter, was born.

1961 Ricky Gervais, English comedian, actor, writer, was born.

1962 Phill Jupitus, English comedian and broadcaster, was born.

1967  First live global satellite television programme – Our World

 The Intelsat I nicknamed “Early Bird”, one of the satellites used

1975  Mozambique achieved independence.

1981  Microsoft was restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

1982 Greece abolished the head shaving of recruits in the military.

1991  Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993  Kim Campbell was chosen as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1996  The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

1997  An unmanned Progress spacecraft collidedwith the Russian space station, Mir.

1997   The Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat erupted resulting in the deaths of 19 people.

1998  In Clinton v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court decided that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was unconstitutional.

2006 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

So I was delighted to see a pristine hardback copy of his 2001 novel, The Hesperides Tree, in a local charity shop for only £1.49. The novel has several things in common with Hopeful Monsters; despite being shorter, it has the same intellectual cross-disciplinary ambition, this time throwing genetics, mythology, information technology and terrorism of both the Irish and the middle Eastern variety into the mix, not to speak of the same stylistic features: the repeated use of verbs of consciousness, an idiosyncratic use of punctuation. It’s full of action, and event, and slightly out-dated relevance, like the millennium bug. So why is it such a dreadful disappointment?

The novel is a first person narrative, ostensibly by an eighteen year old man, the son of a psychotherapist and documentary maker. Except that it isn’t. There isn’t a single point in the book at which the voice is convincingly that of a young man at the end of the twentieth century, regardless of his background. I’m not asking that it be typical, or representative in any way, simply that it sound authentic. It doesn’t even have that creaky, slightly embarrassing air of an old man imitating his grandchildren. It’s just the slightly hectoring, slightly dotty, frequently faux-naif, voice of, well, the author, presumably. It’s no surprise that the only part of the novel not written from the viewpoint of the unnamed protagonist – a longish manuscript produced by his mother, describing her relationship with the powerful father of one of his best friends, a laughably unbelievable gay hacker (and don’t get me started on Stanislaus) – should sound exactly the same as the rest of the novel, down to the last worn-out narrative device, the last ‘I thought’ followed by a dash.

The plot’s absurd as well, but that’s hardly the point. Plots needn’t be plausible to do what they’re designed to do. (Though it’s odd that someone with the background of Mosley should fail so dismally at producing a picture of the rich and powerful, the movers and shakers, that doesn’t feel as if a Heat writer were having a stab at parodying Aldous Huxley.) And it might be claimed that my stubborn need for a convincing voice, or voices, and for dialogue that sounds as though it might actually have been uttered by human beings, rather than the single monotonous voice of the book’s author, is nothing more than a bourgeois clinging to the traditional novel, whatever that is. According to the narrator, who switches from studying biology to literature: ”literature seemed to treat humans no differently than science did; as characters predestined to behave in the way they did, very occasionally happening by chance to change, but with no awareness of autonomy. Their brains produced no more than a stream of consciousness or rather unconsciousness because they contained no feel of how humans might be creative. Thus literature became a chronicle of humanity’s oddities and crimes and follies, peopled by characters with no virtue except that of being quaint. This was decked out indeed often enough in glorious or subtle language which gave the impression of empowerment; but there was little feel of this in the characters portrayed.”

Well, this is nonsense, and obscenely so in a novel whose characters aren’t sufficiently realised to achieve quaintness, never mind creativity. The love interest, which takes up much of the book, involves a young Irish woman whose capacity for wide-eyed philosophical whimsy is, alas, as great as that of the narrator, and a lesbian feminist who nonetheless finds our young man not only worth getting a leg over but also suitable father material. The descriptions of love are mawkish and the sex scenes downright hilarious. I’d say that the women characters were particularly offensively portrayed if it weren’t for the even more excruciating presence of that gay chum, “like some sort of tattered eagle on its rock”. Early on in the novel, the author, sorry, the young narrator, says: “Language seems a bit out of its depth when it tries to say how things might be right.” He should try reading a few more books; I’m sure I’m not the only one who could provide a list of novels in which what might constitute the good, or the right, is addressed with considerable skill and grace (see the object of my last review for an example). In the case of this novel, language seems pretty much out of its depth when it tries to do anything other than be tritely vacuous and portentous. Oh dear.

524  Battle of Vézeronce, the Franks defeated the Burgundians.

841  Battle of Fontenay.

1530  At the Diet of Augsburg the Augsburg Confession was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor by the Lutheran princes and Electors of Germany.

Reading of the Confessio Augustana by Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530

1678  Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman awarded a doctorate of philosophy.

1741  Maria Theresa of Austria was crowned ruler of Hungary.

1786  Gavriil Pribylov discovered St. George Island of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

1788  Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1876  Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

1880 Potatau Te Wherowhero of Waikato, the first Maori king died.

1900 Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, was born (d. 1979).

1903 George Orwell (pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), British writer, was born  (d. 1950).

1903 Anne Revere, American actress, was born  (d. 1990).

1906  Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw shot and killed prominent architect Stanford White.

1913  American Civil War veterans began arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913.

1913  Cyril Fletcher, British comedian, was born  (d. 2005).

 1923 Nicholas Mosley, British writer, was born.

1925 June Lockhart, American actress, was born.

1928 Peyo, Belgian illustrator, was born  (d. 1992).

 1938  Dr. Douglas Hyde was inaugurated the first President of Ireland.

1939  Clint Warwick, English musician (The Moody Blues), was bron (d. 2004).

1944  World War II: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the largest battle ever fought in the Nordic Countries, began.

1945 Carly Simon, American singer, was born.

1947  The Diary of Anne Frank was published.

1948  The Berlin airlift began.

1949  Long-Haired Hare, starring Bugs Bunny, was released in theatres.

1950  The Korean War began with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.

1952  Tim Finn, New Zealand singer/songwriter, was born.

1961 Ricky Gervais, English comedian, actor, writer, was born.

1962 Phill Jupitus, English comedian and broadcaster, was born.

1967  First live global satellite television programme – Our World

 The Intelsat I nicknamed “Early Bird”, one of the satellites used

1975  Mozambique achieved independence.

1981  Microsoft was restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington.

1982 Greece abolished the head shaving of recruits in the military.

1991  Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.

1993  Kim Campbell was chosen as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and became the first female Prime Minister of Canada.

1996  The Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

1997  An unmanned Progress spacecraft collidedwith the Russian space station, Mir.

1997   The Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat erupted resulting in the deaths of 19 people.

1998  In Clinton v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court decided that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was unconstitutional.

2006 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Apectul cel mai plăcut, din punctul meu de vedere, este modul în care Mosley descrie atmosfera epocii: sunt prezentate detalii din viaţa ştiinţifică şi politică a anilor dinaintea ascensiunii lui Hitler, sunt aduse în discuţie diverse dezbateri filozofice şi sunt pomeniţi Einstein, Wittgenstein, H.G. Wells sau Kierkegaard (printre mulţi alţii; de fapt lista personalităţilor pomenite în cartea asta e atât de lungă încât nu ştiu ce anume a vrut scriitorul să demonstreze, mai ales că unele nume sunt doar pasagere, dar probabil pică bine în cadrul general).

Au fost pagini geniale, dar şi destul de multe la care îmi venea să las cartea din mână. Am trecut prin carte aşa cum aş fi mers cu un sac în jurul picioarelor. M-am blocat deseori, gândindu-mă că dau pagina numai ca s-o dau, fără să-nţeleg cu adevărat ce şi cum… Alteori, simţeam o bucurie imensă, iar bucuria asta apărea, după cum am observat, atunci când Mosley nu încerca să improvizeze pe firul logic. Au fost fragmente deosebit de cursive, chit că acţiunea trece prin Anglia, Germania, Rusia, Africa, Spania şi ce alte ţări or mai fi fost pe-acolo. Cartea este foarte lungă, poate prea lungă, iar ăsta cred că este şi unul dintre motivele pentru care există pagini foarte bune, dar şi destule pagini efectiv proaste, chinuitoare. Oricum, Mosley a luat premiul Whitbread în 1990. Bravo lui, dar pe mine, per total, nu m-a convins. Poate vă întrebaţi ce sunt aceşti monştri plini de speranţă. Ei bine, cam asta am găsit în carte: „Sunt lucruri care poate s-au născut un pic înainte de vreme, când nu se ştie dacă mediul e pregătit pentru ei…”. Citiţi şi veţi înţelege mai bine.

E greu să scrii despre dragoste, adică să trăieşti în prezenţa ei. Poţi să fugi spre ea şi chiar să te loveşti de ea şi poţi să te uiţi după ea, cum se îndepărtează. Dar, când ai descoperit-o, e ca atunci când doi oameni se întâlnesc faţă în faţă, mergând pe sârmă: trebuie să continue să înainteze, altfel cad. Ar vrea să treacă unul prin, în celălalt; uneori, e posibil! Apoi, însă, nu mai e. E mult mai uşor, mai natural să fii ca o frunză, să trăieşti şi să cazi.

Nicholas Mosley, “Monştri plini de speranţă”, Editura Vellant, 2008

Încă nu întâlnisem prea mulţi nazişti în viaţă. Prima tentativă a lui Hitler de a prelua puterea, în 1923 la Munchen, eşuase, iar el ajunsese la închisoare. După aceea, nu se mai auzise mare lucru despre el până la primul miting al Partidului Nazist de la Nurnberg, din 1927. Atunci îi spusesem tatei:

- Dar ce îi diferenţiază de alte grupări de dreapta?

- Sunt singurul partid politic care declară sincer ce doreşte, îmi răspunsese tata.

- Şi ce doresc? întrebasem.

- Să îi omoare pe toţi cei care nu sunt ca ei, îmi spusese tata.

- Dar ei cum sunt? întrebasem.

- Sunt ca nişte oameni care vor să îi omoare pe toţi cei care nu sunt ca ei, îmi spusese tata.

- Dar atunci, cu siguranţă se vor găsi alţii, care să-i omoare pe ei mai întâi, spusesem.

- Nu, pentru că sunt politicieni şi nu-i crede nimeni, spusese tata.

Din “Monştri plini de speranţă”, de Nicholas Mosley

Bert deals with awfulness and other things by stammering  – that’s why he sees the therapist. And for largely similar reasons, I guess, he sleeps with a Trotskyite with obvious organizational and conspirational gifts. A pretext for Bert to think of revolutions being aesthetic, if anything. Early in the morning, on the banks of the Thames, in conditions most inappropriate for a nephew of the acting British prime-minister, he writes a letter to a friend/homoerotic muse, explaining how he would make a film.

My idea is that there should be at least two screens in the first place perhaps side by side but then overlapping or one moving inside the other so that for a time the other is like a frame. And on one screen – the one that would later be in the centre say – there would be a fairly ordinary story such as of a man going off to war, as you might see in any old film; a crusader or a cowboy perhaps trotting off in his awful armour; he would be one of those men that actors like acting so much. you know, all tragic and trussed up like a turkey. And one the other screen – the one that would later be the frame perhaps – there would be as it were the separate but quite closely connected story of, say, the wife he has left behind; who as soon as he has gone – on the other screen he would be trundling across one of those tastefully orange deserts – the wife would call in some frightful lover – this story would be quite corny too you see; stories usually are; what’s interesting is only what we make of them – a lover like one of those shaggy men you have to have more than a glimpse of to make sure it isn’t a fig-leaf; and they, the wife and the lover, would begin to make love; or to make those advances towards love that they’d feel they’d have to; what else can they do for ninety minutes? But really of course they might not want to at all; this is like life; to excuse ourselves, we make up morality. (pp.144-45)

And then – this is the point – what was happening on one screen – or in the connections between the two – would become slightly bulging; bursting out from one screen to the other; like something living; like a cell; like something trying to emerge and create something different. Like a butterfly. The edge of the wife’s nightdress, perhaps, would just flick out of her screen at the arm of the crusader who has his sword raised above his victim; might stir him on; might stop him. The crusader’s raised elbow, perhaps, would just come out of his screen and nudge the wife on her bed; which would make her pause; if not to say just yes or no at least to think – no not think, it would have to be what happens – whether she would finally go away or not with her lover. Which would depend on what she and he, the husband, had ever been to each other; which would make her go or would stop her. The flick between screen bulging outwards; like a propagation. […] This is not to do with morals, you see: it is to do with how people might see truly. (p.147)

What if the audience were told that they themselves could affect the outcome; were told that by pressing a lever or button or something by their seats they might make happen or not happen (I was going to write happy!) what they wanted to make happen (or happy!) on the screens – would the crusader live or die; would the wife or not go off with her lover. And the levers or buttons would be connected to nothing of course; except to a machine that would record the members of the audience’s decisions. But this would be the point: it would be like life. People would know of course that everyone else would be pulling levers; so that they should not be surprised when things did not turn out as they liked. But still, what they had chosen would be recorded: and it would be this – this is the point: this is what their influence is! – that might affect them; in their own bodies, their minds. The film of course would be just whatever the film-maker had made of it; like God; but people would still be making what they wanted of themselves; by their decisions; and this would be possible, because they would know their decisions which had been recorded. They would know – You get what you want, you see: in yourselves, look – you are this or that sort of person! You want these other people to live or die! You want yourselves to be lively or deathly. This would be the nudge, you see, recorded: both in, and affecting, their minds: and also the outside world – (p.148)