ARTHUR & GEORGE, BY JULIAN BARNES

Way outside of my normal range of reading here, but hey, that’s what the Christmas book stack is all about. Apparently it’s a pseudohistorical novel about Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji, and the ‘Great Wyrly Outrage’ animal mutilation hearings. In turn-of-the-century Britain, they lacked the foresight to blame such things on aliens from outer space, so they instead turned their suspicions upon the home-grown variety.

Done

I have this problem with most non-genre fiction. If a book doesn’t amuse me, entertain me, but still doesn’t offend me in some way, I generally consider it as a sort of puzzle. It’s a dumb way to think about fiction, and never a satisfactory one (unless I’m reading a mystery, and then I’m back in Genreland), but that’s what I do. I suppose that’s some kind of pseudo-scientific instinct surfacing. With that out of the way, here’s my attempt at explaining why Arthur and George deserve fictional examination on the same docket. Their lives don’t cross currents until late in the book, so we consider them predominantly in parallel, George in present tense and Arthur in past. Arthur is large ebullient, extravagant, athletic, opinionated, successful, wealthy. George is small, quiet, restrained, of Parsee extraction, not given to bluster, accused, convicted, the son of a vicar, a man of modest means and modest needs. They both, though, seem to believe in some arch logic governing their lives, governing all lives. For George, it is the word of law, of rules. Not morals or ideals, really, but of their projections into governance and bureaucracy. Arthur’s particular framework is a sort of updated chivalric nobility: perfection of mind and body, duty, respect toward women, relentless pursuit of justice, etc.

I don’t know how much Barnes has injected himself here, but one imagines quite a bit, at least in the case of George, whose only imprints on written history are most likely court transcripts and his obscure treatise on railway law. So lets assume these similarities are fabricated, and therefore expressed with intent. Drama stems from the challenges to their guiding principles, and how they respond. Law fails George when provincial prejudices and subtle rhetoric (the antithesis of law?) conspire to find him guilty of maiming livestock when he did not (we assume). Arthur’s honor bears assault by the chronic but less than fatal illness that strikes his plain-minded wife, and a vibrant and witty new love. His honor and his feelings become irreconcilable, but he attempts the trick nonetheless by hiding his new affair from no one but his wife, while refusing to consummate the affair with anything but the intangibles.

It’s odd. Despite imprisonment, public disgrace, and the staggering injustice George suffers, he seems to fare better than Arthur. He starts an odd, boring, but ultimately good person, and remains one through everything. There’s no teary breakdown for George, no fiery eruption of true self upon the complete erosion of his defenses. He doesn’t lose faith in the law, just thinks it needs some tweaking, some calk and a better door handle. Arthur’s faith in honor also remains intact, but oddly twisted. Years of deceiving his wife as honorably as he could take their tole on both his relationships, straining them, forcing him to doubt them both. When his wife dies, his choices remain difficult. When to marry again? How honest to be about it? How to bridge the old lie into the new truth? In the process he becomes convinced of the scientific validity of spiritualism, which might just be in character, or could be a symptom, I don’t know.

I know that didn’t make a lot sense. But new words do!

Words

coir (n): fiber from the outer husk of a coconut. p.106
cockstand (n): undoubtedly slang for an erection, but not in the dictionary. Googling it brings up several references to erotic letters penned by James Joyce. p. 166
assegai (n): a kind of South African spear, or the tree from which this spear would be made. p. 167
wold (n): a high, open moor. p. 180
rumbustious (adj): boisterous or unruly. p. 193
adduce (v): to cite as evidence p. 216
traduce (n): to speak poorly of or lie about a person to damage their reputation. p. 258
a fortiori (adv. & adj.): used to express a conclusion for which there is stronger evidence than the existing one. p. 259
miscegenation (n): the interbreeding of races. p. 275