A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. CONFUCIUS

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Le Style, C'est L'homme

I've just finished Artemis Cooper's recent, very readable biography of the irrepressible author and adventurer Patrick Leigh Fermor. Known almost universally as 'Paddy', he was such a larger-than-life character that almost every page of the book made me gasp: did he really do that? Did he honestly know all those people? How on earth did he manage to survive without ever having a 'proper' job?

Fermor is a legend. Man of action, war hero, restless voyager, travel writer, scholar and intellectual, doer and thinker, bibliophile, linguist, loyal friend, old-fashioned romantic and dazzling conversationalist are just a few of the epithets you could use to describe him. His enthusiasm and sense of fun were infectious, and his charm and charisma irresistible. He smoked and drank furiously all his life, yet enjoyed mainly excellent health until the ripe old age of 96. He took great risks but survived without major mishap; he was perpetually late in delivering typescripts to his publisher but always charmed his way through; he was impossibly good-looking and women fell at his feet. He broke all the rules. He was a Byronic figure — and quite specifically so, as the Greeks revere him to this day for his part in helping the Cretan resistance during WW2, which included a star role in the kidnap and deportation of German general Heinrich Kreipe, a daring piece of Boy's Own bravado immortalised in the 1957 film Ill Met by Moonlight.

Yet no one's perfect, and even legends have feet of clay. Fermor could often be insensitive, and ride roughshod over others' feelings; and some found him rather cocky and boastful. He also had a slight snobbish streak, I feel — but perhaps I'm just a tiny bit jealous of his impossibly wide circle of aristocratic and influential friends who would give him money, put him up, and lend him their cottages and châteaux.

His writing too, brilliant as it can be, is not without its faults and purple patches. A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, which recount his epic walk as an 18-year-old across a 1930s' Europe, are masterworks, and made a lasting impression on me when I first read them, partly inspiring some of my own treks. But other books of his don't quite live up to the sparkle and sense of wonder you get from these two. For instance, Mani — a memoir of a trip in the southernmost Greek Peloponnese — I found rather hard-going, with its maze of erudite detail. There was too much history and not enough story; the narrative became lost in the factual complexity. Yes, Fermor can write really well, but occasionally he tries too much and can't help showing off.

The style really is the man in Fermor's case. All of which got me thinking about style in general. There are as many different literary styles as there are writers, from the laconic minimalism of Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy to the lush extravagance of Proust and Faulkner, from the clear, workmanlike prose of George Orwell to the off-putting density of Hermann Melville and the baffling impenetrability of the later James Joyce.

But I don't think we should be deterred by perceived difficulty. For example, I've just read Swann's Way, the first volume of Proust's towering classic In Search of Lost Time, and found it a complete joy and delight, despite all those stories about its complexity, and the intricacy of those long, convoluted sentences, and how no one ever finishes it. Sure, you have to focus and concentrate, and you can't read it quickly, and sometimes you have to reread in order to work out the sense. But the rewards far outweigh the effort.

If you want facile, simply and poorly written escapist literature, which has no bearing on real life, then that's fine. Go to the beach and enjoy. But I want something with a little more meat and meaning, a book which says something about what it is to be human, how we think and feel and relate, how we struggle and fail and suffer and achieve happiness or not, how we live and endure. And I can find this in books of enormously varied styles, whether (to take the travel field) it's in Leigh Fermor's baroque chronicles or in Bruce Chatwin's condensed and pared-down prose. The apparently simple or manifestly complex —  each style is artifice; but the essential thing is that it should represent the writer as authentically as possible. Any inauthenticity you can spot a mile away. And Fermor is as authentic as they come.

Ultimately, when reading a great book, you have to submit to the unique style and world of the author, and humbly enter his or her own particular and individual world without prejudice and with curiosity and an open, enquiring mind.

I'll end my piece with this touching final paragraph from Artemis Cooper's biography of her friend, the uncategorisable Paddy Fermor:              

Paddy had endured his last illness and the inevitable shrinking of his world with a kind of bewildered sadness, 'It's very odd,' he said to one friend at Kardamyli after the operation to remove the tumour. 'My life has suddenly gone out of kilter, familiar and yet utterly strange, like before and after the war.' He never talked about death, though of course he thought about it. In a short biography of Proust which was found in his room in Kardamyli, he had written a message in the middle of the night, at a moment when he felt the end was close. Yet whatever sorrow he felt at leaving the world, what he wanted to express was a sense of profound gratitude. 'Love to all and kindness to all friends,' he wrote, 'and thank you all for a life of great happiness.'

(The Broken Road, the third part of Patrick Leigh Fermor's trilogy describing his walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, was published posthumously last year.) 

13 comments:

Rubye Jack said...

I also prefer books with meaning and depth and about the human condition, and shall add this to my list next to the Proust books. This is such a thoughtful and well written review.

Dominic Rivron said...

All I really know about the man is the story told by Ill Met By Moonlight - it's one of a box-set of Powell-Pressburger film DVDs I've got here.

dritanje said...

I echo Rubye Jack's comment about what you have written, such a generous recommendation to anyone who has not read PLF's work. he does indeed seem like a larger than life character who was so knowledgeable - what did you think of the fact that, In Crete, when the captured German general began to quote one of Horace's poems (I think it was Horace) Paddy, who had translated it from the Latin, knew it off by heart, continued the poem where the general left off. Astounding! And I'm looking forward to reading The Broken Road.

Vagabonde said...

Until 2002 when I had a small Apple computer I used to list all the books I had in my library. I just looked up and I show two Fermor – Between the Woods & the Water and The Traveller’s Tree. I think I did buy a couple more at books sales but that was later on, and not on my list. After reading your post I’ll try to find them and read them. I need to make a new list, maybe on Excel ?, of all my books so I know what I have here – maybe 3000 maybe 5000 maybe more, who knows. The biggest problem is to find them as they are in no order. As for Chatwin, let’s see, up to 2002 I listed 4 titles. I feel bad about all this, but I do read every night until past midnight. Your post whetted my appetite for Fermor, thanks.

George said...

A superbly written and informative piece, Robert. I've yet to read Fermor, but look forward to it at some point. On the general issue of writing and reading, I find that I am deeply affected by a writer's style. For example, while I am a native Mississippian, I have no taste whatsoever for the style of Faulkner, and I have read only two or three of his novels since my university days. On the other hand, I greatly admire the style and work of William Styron, another southern writer. When I struggle with a book, it's usually because I can't get comfortable with the style and rhythm of the writing. When a book becomes a labor to get through, I tend to abandon it before finishing.

Nick said...

I agree with you that with Mr Fermor there's often more style than content. Consequently, eventually as I read him I lost interest and never quite made it to Constantinople in his company. A pity really, but I kept falling asleep along the way.

The Solitary Walker said...

Thanks, Rubye… and Dominic, I haven't seen that film, but the reviews are far from brilliant.

Yes, that's an extraordinary story about Horace, Dritanje. Both captor and prisoner did get on with each other personally and intellectually, and they reunited after the war.

I think you might enjoy Fermor and Chatwin, Vagabonde — George too. I agree with you about Faulkner, but have yet to read Styron.

Nick — yes, his overworked style does sometimes get in the way, but, nevertheless, I enjoyed his two classics about walking across Europe immensely.

Goat said...

I should give hime another go, I suppose. I started on 'A Time of Gifts' but found his style too show-off-ish and aloof. And after encountering the word "beetling" twice within a few pages, I tossed it aside with a yelp of frustration - which produced a resounding crash as I was reading it on a Kindle.

The Solitary Walker said...

Yes, I think he lacked a ruthless editor, Goat. It didn't help that his publisher, Jock Murray, was a friend.

Susan Scheid said...

It's an interesting thing about "the difficult." I've had the experience countless times of trying and failing to read a "difficult" book, poem, or listen to a difficult piece of music, then one day, a path simply opens up. (Not always--I suspect Finnegan's Wake will remain glowering at me from the bookshelf.) Once I finally embarked successfully on Proust, there was no stopping me--not even the fact that the final two volumes of the new translation were not available in the US (copyright, if you can imagine!). The next time I was in England, I brought them home. I did bog down a bit with Albertine, but overall, what a phenomenal entry into a lost world it was.

The Solitary Walker said...

It's good to be in contact with you again, Susan! I read the 1st vol of Proust in the excellent Lydia Davis translation, and will soon be on the 2nd vol (with Enright).

I think your lesson about try, try and try again with a 'difficult' work of art is an important one. Who knows the discoveries we miss through easy rejection? Learning is not always a comfortable, feet-up-on-the desk process, but the rewards can be oh-so-high if we are prepared to sweat a bit.

am said...

Some synchronicity here. The day I read your post on Patrick Leigh Fermor and Proust, my calendar had this quote from Proust:

"We do not receive wisdom. We must discover it for ourselves after a journey through the wilderness, which no one can make for us, which no one else can spare us. For our wisdom is the point of view from which we come, at last, to regard the world."

Here is a tribute to Patrick Leigh Fermor written by a friend of his who was born and raised here in Bellingham:

http://patrickleighfermor.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/so-no-more-hell-go-a-roving/

You've got me thinking that this might be a good year to spend some time with the writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Marcel Proust.

The Solitary Walker said...

Nice to see you, Am. What remarkable synchronicity (again)! I absolutely love that quote from Proust, and have made a note of it. I've just read that tribute by David Mason, Fermor's younger friend who lived next door to him in Greece, and how extraordinary that he came from Bellingham!