Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)

This is one of the best things I have ever read. It is almost a cliche now to describe Gulliver’s Travels as a biting satire, but it is utterly true - and a wonderful one to boot. In a shortened, picture form, Gulliver’s Travels is one of the world’s most popular children’s book so the plot feels familiar and almost nostalgic. Along with rice cakes and marmite sandwiches, reading it took me back to my childhood. Suddenly I was eight again and running around the playground.

The story goes a bit like this. Gulliver leaves his wife and child to go travelling, and from then on has a set of the weirdest, most fantastical adventures ever set to paper. Shortly after leaving, Gulliver shipwrecks and stumbles upon Lilliput, the renowned land of little people that can walk around on his hand. After the ensuing adventures and a journey home, Gulliver embarks on a further bold voyage, but this time his ship flounders on Brobdingnag, a nation of giants where suddenly it is Gulliver who finds himself a little person. Next, after leaving, he finds all sorts of odd peoples – a floating island in the sky, magicians who can conjure the dead – and finally a land of wise and logical horses, the perspicacious Houyhnhnms. Alongside these omnibenevolent nags, he makes a discovery that turns his blood a-chill. Here, he encounters the infamous ‘Yahoos’. A savage, untameable, splenic animal that seems to bear more than a passing resemblance – in looks and habits – to the species of which Gulliver is a committed member: the unhumble human...

It's wonderful

There is just something so special about this book. It might not be the most significant aspect, perhaps, but I even loved the 16th century-style writing style. For example, every proper noun is capitalised, and letters starting with ‘h’ are always preceded with ‘an’: I saw with mine Eyes, an Hundred Savages advancing upon my poar Self.  This must have been standard at the time, but it now lends the books a delightful realism. I’m sure it gets edited out of a lot of modern editions, but I think that’s a mistake.

Gulliver’s personality binds the whole thing together like an egg in cake batter. His most striking characteristic is an ostentatious gallantry. Beached on Lilliput, and captured by the little people, he quickly pays tribute and accepts the rule of the tiny Lilliputian king, even though he is no bigger than his face; soon describing him as ‘my gracious majesty’. Ultimately, Gulliver feels entitled – being a British citizen of Her Majesty the Queen – to be treated civilly and with decorum. He expects to be welcomed into the court of every king, and for his needs to be met – food, wine and a new ‘suit of cloaths’ wherever on the globe he finds himself. This entitlement can lead him to be dreadfully naive, at times unaware of clear and present danger. 

What makes us human?

Yet what makes the book interesting is how Gulliver sees the world. It is a fascinating sum of contradictions. Gulliver is overtly proud of his country, and acts as an ambassador wherever he goes. But he also embarks on new life-styles with gusto. In three of the places he visits, he settles, stays for years, learns the language and embraces their lifestyle - even though it’s almost the opposite of his own. However, Gulliver thinks of his own society as far more sophisticated and on a ‘higher level’ than any of the civilisations he visits. In fact, nothing gets him questioning his homeland, until he meets the Yahoos....

The Yahoos are a breed of savage humans. Gulliver is repulsed by them because he sees the character of the despicable Yahoo’s mirrored in humans, and the character of the horses as far superior. So, he never quite manages to critique British society and it’s institutions – something that is changeable – but just the human character – which isn’t (especially not en masse). 

I think that’s quite significant, and clearly a Swiftian commentary on something. I see it as saying a range of things from a kind of Thatcherite proclamation that society doesn’t exist, to the idea that culture is just the emergent phenomena that arises out of the character’s of the people that live there. I think that’s dead wrong - and actually so would most sociologists today. Institutions are incredibly important, but Gulliver is only concerned with character. I can’t quite tell which side of the fence Swift himself sat on – but since his most vicious critique is on personality traits, I’ll put flag down and say that he got this one wrong. He savagely critiqued humans character - and finds fault with the echos of our animal urges in the way we live, but he didn’t stop to mention how amazing it is that we’ve developed institutions that work well despite all our Yahoo-like greed.

Life Lessons

I think I missed a lot of the satire in the book – especially since I’m not au fait with the subtleties of George I’s court – but I think I got the main point, and it’s exceptionally clever. By creating and describing so many fantastical species – little men, big men, magicians, talking horses – the book is essentially an exercise in frame setting. It is priming us, by poking fun at imaginary beings, to be able to picture ourselves objectively. Gulliver rocks up at Lilliput and finds a bunch of weird little people, but what if he rocked up in Britain, what strange species would he find there? Humans. 

Swift want us to take a long look at what we really are. For him it’s obvious. We’re just savages, monkeys, a slave to our urges. And we've painstakingly built a society that pretends we’re not. That’s problematic, because it means we’re literally unaware of how stupid some of our actions are. Once you start looking as Jonathan Swift wanted us to look, everything becomes ridiculous. From living in houses that are so far superfluous to our needs, to border conflicts, to political slanging matches. This is all comes from animalistic, primal urges – which are just stupid. And yet we pretend that there’s a good intelligent reason for everything, that things are the way they are for a reason. As a culture, we do not live rationally. Our selfish, grubbing instincts are built into the very fabric of our society. But, as I mentioned earlier, that’s only half the story. Actually, society is brilliant, amazing, incredible - and it’s a testament to human ingenuity that we’ve managed to design ourselves a system that succeeds not despite, but because of, the character of the human race. 

And yet, we can do more. We can continue to strive towards building a better world. To be better, to live better together, and to help those that get left behind. It's not all doom and gloom, but there's no time for complacency either. Let's get cracking...

Germinal (Émile Zola)

I asked a French friend about Germinal, by Emile Zola, and he said that since this book is on the French syllabus, it is often thought about with a groan. That’s a shame, because I loved all the books I read in school. For some people, I can imagine that remembering a novel they were forced to read, takes them back to those dusty, classrooms full of youthful boredom. For me, reading always had the opposite effect; novels I read in school let my imagination soar and transported me to distant worlds far away from the a lecturing, hectoring Mrs Gibbs. I thought Germinal was amazing. This book not only paints a vivid, and necessary, picture of poverty, but also provides some interesting challenges to the economic system we live in.

Germinal tells the story of a miner’s strike in 18th century France. Etienne is a poor but bright drifting worker. Impoverished and hungry, he comes across a mining village and falls into a job hewing coal. It’s backbreaking work. The villagers slog underground all day in the dark and the damp, but are barely paid enough to survive. Etienne becomes deeply radicalized by the suffering he sees around him; the capitalist system that allows this to continue must be immoral and corrupt.  At the same time, the coalmine bosses are trying to reduce the workers’ pay yet further. The villagers are scared that they simply will not be able to live under these harsh new terms. Etienne, with his staunch political views, is well placed to lead the coalminers into a standoff - a strike. This strike becomes bloody and brutal as the workers starve, and the company’s profits dry up. Anger bubbles and festers, and the standoff becomes a war. This is no longer about simply trying to win a bread-line wage. They want to send the whole system to hell. And at the root of it all is a crazy dream – that all men are equal under the sun.

My thoughts

This book is the perfect antidote to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  In Atlas Shrugged, unfettered capitalism leads to advancement and beatification of the human race. In Germinal it leads to effective slavery, conflict and suffering. I don’t think Ayn Rand’s was blind to the ‘Germinal’ critique, she just didn’t care. I think she would say that if a man let himself live a miserable existence  - in a coalmine or anywhere else - then he was a fool.  But the two books are perfect to read together. At times, they almost seem to be in dialogue with each other putting forward arguments and counter-arguments. For example, Atlas Shrugged posits that since it is the capitalist that takes the risk that creates wealth, they deserve the rewards. But Germinal neatly undercuts this by comparing these wealthy bourgeois throwing around a little of their money, whilst the workers stake their lives on the company.

Socialism

Germinal isn’t exactly an advocate for socialism. In fact, the socialist beliefs and believers are exposed throughout as somewhat naïve and all too human.  However, it certainly is a shrill voice highlighting rottenness at the core of the capitalist system. 

And I think it’s very effective. The descriptions of poverty in the book are vivid and crushing.  It’s always worth remembering that we belong to an economic system that can treat people very cruelly. And also that it is in our nature to accept and live with it, rather than to challenge it. The kind of suffering that Germinal describes is still endemic in the world today, and I feel far too – dangerously too – complacent about it.  Reading this novel flared up something inside of me, and I found it quite deeply radicalizing.  Whatever the cause, and whatever the reason, and however impossible it is to stop – I think it must be a universal declaration that this kind of suffering is wrong.

It is true though, that for those in the West, Germinal’s central point has become less relevant. The story describes how workers might get trapped in horrible working conditions with a wage that is not enough to survive. Today, the legacy of the Union movement has ensured a certain standard of work safety, and we have a minimum wage, both of which largely prevents the kind of situation that Germinal describes. 

Perhaps then, Germinal can be seen today as a good argument against socialism. A problem – poor working conditions and lower wagers - had a good solution within the current system. Beyond this, Germinal describes the wider rumblings of socialism  - calls to destroy the bosses, uniting all the workers of the world, totalitarianism. But none of this is effectual in the book, and none of it has been effective in real life.

I’d like to make one final moderating point. It’s easy to write a story that focuses on a salient example of human suffering, but it is harder to focus on the things that are not as visible. I’d suggest some things to keep in mind whilst reading. 1) If these miners weren’t employed in a coalmine, they might have been in worse work or unemployed, or dead from starvation. 2) The coal they were producing was powering the industrial revolution. This means a) it was directly improving thousands of peoples lives, powering hospitals, schools and saving lives b) it was a temporary phase the West needed to go through to develop. Billions of people are better off now – and that couldn’t have happened if men didn’t go down coalmines. 3) Worker’s conditions did improve, and worker’s did take a greater share of the profits 4) For most of history nasty jobs were normal, and it is only the capitalist system that has ever liberated people from it.

One more thing

Germinal is a really exciting book that will pull you into a dark and unfamiliar world.  Some of the scenes underground, trapped in bowels of this living mine are scarier and more claustrophic than any horror film I’ve seen.  But more than that, Germinal is a question, a challenge, and a call to arms to stand-up for the disenfranchised of the world.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

I have no idea why this novel was written. It is the most beautiful book; the language, the word-play, the finely-tuned emotional resonance, but, like a mouldy orange, it's written around a rotting core...

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

The central theme of this book is deliberately shocking. A man - our narrator, Humbert Humbert - is obsessed with girls, nymphets as he terms them, under the age of 14. He lodges in a house, and becomes infatuated with the landlord’s 12 year old child, Lolita. He then marries the mother who promptly discovers his shameful secret and, by coincidence, dies immediately afterwards. Humbert takes off on a two year ’joy-ride' with the Lolita (now his step-daughter). Soon, they notice they are being followed; creepy events start to occur with increasing regularity, and their sick but stable world begins to unravel.

Reading Lolita is, quite profoundly, a disturbing experience. Our narrator describes his deviant interactions with a child as though the two of them were in a (consummated) adult relationship. He tells us that Lolita is playing games with him, leading him on, teasing him, flirting with him. As a reader, I had to constantly force myself to remember that the object of his affections is twelve, and that the narrator - monstrously - is not reliable.

My thoughts

Reading this novel, I sometimes felt like throwing the book down and yelling ‘why was this written?’.This is not a question with which Nabokov had much sympathy. Sardonically, he writes:

‘Besides the lambs who read [Lolita].. in a spirit of ‘why did he have  to write it?’ or ‘why should I read about maniacs, there has been a number of wise [people]’

I think ‘Why’ is an important question to ask though. And the more I think about Lolita, the more I consider it donut shaped. There is a lot there, but nothing in the centre; no morals to bind it all together, no deeper purpose, no crusade, no point even. It just is. And that's quite difficult to accept.

Nabokov's genius was writing a horned-melon of a book. One that is so breathtakingly good that it must be read, and yet the reading of it will torture you. It will give you glimpses of true beauty, and yet - wantonly - prickle and probe with no desire to leave you a better person.

And that barbed, spiny, nettlesome nature runs down deep into the book’s veins. Because it’s impossible to be shocked continuously for 400 pages. The gritty reality of what is being described leaves you anesthetised and numb. As a reader - just by reading - you tacitly accept Humbert’s behaviour. Worse, we’re all complicit in it, by, as Anthony Burgess termed it ‘nodding scandalised assent’ to Humbert’s crimes.

Lolita almost seems to use the propaganda technique of the Big Lie. By repeatedly framing the the interaction between a 40 year old man and his 12 year stepdaughter as a relationship - when it isn’t that at all - the reader cannot help but think inside that frame. And that’s a scary commentary on the human capacity for acceptance. But also a reason for questioning the author’s motivations.

Because again and again, my mind returns to why. Nabokov felt strongly that he didn’t have to justify why he wrote Lolita, and he claimed that ‘Lolita has no moral in tow’. I disagree. Nabokov doesn’t just touch on taboo behaviour, he has written a book which - on the surface - provides a justification, an excuse even, for horrendous crimes. I think it is obvious that the book does not attempt to provide that justification, but that doesn’t relieve the pressing and unanswered question. Why?.

Life +

Lolita opened my mind to the beauty of language. Nabokov’s writing is quite simply stunning. Not only did I learn lots of new words reading it (crepitate, for example), but I’ve also never seen writing like it. Nabokov makes the words on the page bend precisely to his will. If you want to write, I don’t think you can afford to miss seeing what this author can do. It is almost like a super-power.

I think I took away something about real life too. Humbert's main characteristic is his lack of accountability. Throughout the whole novel, he’s happy to take responsibility for his actions - calling himself a monster etc. - but he sees these actions as inevitable and uncontrollable. He commits the gravest sins without any attempt to stifle his inner demons. We never see him wrestle with himself, still less manage to exercise self-control.

Humbert acts as if a poet’s mind was taped to a robot body. The poet watches and soliloquizes, and writes beautiful expressive words about the actions of this robot. A robot that is programmed to act like a monster and, Humbert feels, completely outside the sphere of his control. In this sense, he is a caricature, most of us don’t abandon our free will so freely, and most don’t have urges so dark. But part of the reason reading Lolita causes us such pangs, is because that same faculty is in us all. We all spend most of the time looking down, watching ourselves acting out our lives. Perhaps we need to wake up.

In fewer words

Prickly, disturbing and energetically amoral, Lolita is a wild trip, a great read, a vibrant splash of colour, and a fizzling fire-work of great writing. One thing’s for sure, as soon as you open the front page, Lolita will reach into your guts and pull you on a madcap rush to places that you don’t want to go. It’s a mouldering orange, a horned melon, an exploration of beauty, and a declaration of perpetual decay. It simply aches to be read; after all, the rest is rust and stardust.

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You can get Lolita here.