A PROPER MARRIAGE - Book review

Doris Lessing’s second book in her semi-biographical ‘Children of Violence’ series, A Proper Marriage (1954) is her sequel to Martha Quest (1952). Certain observations made below are not spoilers – they are mentioned briefly in the book blurb.

The point-of-view is omniscient, so we get inside the heads of several characters, often in the same scene. The story is set in the fictional African country of Zambesia (not a million miles away from Southern Rhodesia where Lessing lived most of her formative years (1925-1949)): ‘The small colonial town was at a crossroads in its growth: half a modern city, half a pioneers’ achievement; a large block of flats might stand next to a shanty of wood and corrugated iron, and most streets petered out suddenly in a waste of scrub and grass’ (p10).

Martha is now nineteen and married to a clerk, Douglas Knowell. She is strong-willed, restless and not particularly enamoured of boring married life – though at the beginning of the book she has only been married five days... ‘Until two weeks ago, her body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted...’ (p37).

It’s the start of the Second World War, though at the outset this does not seem to affect the township. The townsfolk are conscious that there is a ‘big issue’ with the black population, however: ‘any expression of a desire for improvement on the part of the natives was immediately described as impertinence, or sedition, or even worse’ (p62). The parson’s wife observes: ‘If they learn to use arms, they can use them on us... this business of sending black troops overseas is extremely short-sighted. They are treated as equals in Britain, even by the women’ (p66).

When Douglas and his pals sign up to fight, Martha is taken aback; she is not enough for him, he prefers to ‘rush off to war’... (Douglas) ‘had not known how intolerably boring and empty his life was until there was a chance of escaping from it’ (p80).

When Martha learns that she is pregnant and the illegality of an abortion crops up, she ‘flew into an angry tirade against governments who presumed to tell women what they should do with their own bodies; it was the final insult to personal liberty’ (p106).

Throughout the book there are fine examples of Lessing’s eye for description: ‘The jacaranda were holding up jaded yellow arms. This drying, yellowing, fading month, this time when the year tensed and tightened towards the coming rains, always gave her a feeling of perverted autumn, and now filled her with an exquisite cold apprehension. The sky, above the haze of dust, was a glitter of hot blue light’ (p113). Another brief example: ‘Soon the wings of her joy had folded’ (p124). ‘Martha drifted to the divan, where she sat, with listening hands, so extraordinarily compelling was the presence of the stranger in her flesh’ (p129).

The actual scenes running up to and encompassing the birth are very well done. ‘Every particle of her flesh shrieked out, while the wave spurted like an electric current from somewhere in her backbone and went through her in shock after shock...’ (pp163-167). [Lessing gave birth to her first child in 1940].

One observation is certainly no longer true in the age of social media: ‘... one of the minor pleasures of power is to exchange in private views which would ruin you if your followers ever had a suspicion you held them’ (p188)! Also relevant, perhaps: ‘Unfortunately nine-tenths of the time of any political leader must be spent not on defeating his opponents, but on manipulating the stupidities of his own side’ (p365).

Martha gets involved with a group expounding Communism which appeals to her disenchantment with the rich crowd she has been with; and while Douglas is away training, she also flirts with RAF pilots stationed nearby. This is a depiction of a disintegration of a marriage – a marriage perhaps she should never have embarked upon.

There is very little feeling that there is a war ‘in the north’. No wounded, limbless survivors of conflict appear; food and material shortages are not evident.

Martha will appear next in A Ripple in the Storm.

 

 

Writing – the short story

For many years I’ve added to my home library collections of short stories. Until the advent of the e-reader, received wisdom in publishing was that short story collections ‘don’t sell’. What they meant, perhaps, was that they don’t sell in vast numbers so are not worthwhile expending effort on them. However, now any form of writing can be obtained on an e-reader, and enjoyed, and the collected works of many classic authors can be downloaded for very little financial outlay (check out the Delphi Complete Works).

A short story in its literary form is supposed to be a brief fictional prose narrative, often involving one connected episode, a concentrated form, dependent for its success on feeling and suggestion. The writer must attempt to succinctly create a fictional world in the moment. Stories attempt to reflect the life that is lived by all of us, and the short form has to do it without benefit of the depth and breadth of a novel.

And, as with the novel, a short story has the potential to invoke any number of aspects of writing.

·       The plot – the sequence of related events that shape the narrative.

·       The characters – the people who play their parts in the narrative.

·       Setting – the place and time where the story’s action unfolds.

·       Point of view - a consistent perspective on the characters and their actions.

·       Style – how the author chooses to relate the story.

·       Theme – often the submerged back-bone of the story, a unifying idea that provides insight into the human condition.

The length of the short story will be dictated by a number of factors:

·       Complexity of the plot

·       Number of characters

·       Duration of the tale

·       Intended audience

·       It doesn’t have enough content to be a longer piece

That intended audience might be a publisher, an editor, a competition, a magazine, or simply personal preference.

A short story can cover the events of a brief episode or encompass action that takes years to conclude.

The author needs to use a scalpel to excise anything that is not pertinent to the original intention.

If a short story has to fit into 2,000 words then there is little scope for detailed exposition and rising action, and so on.

The nub of the conflict – the problem to be resolved by the protagonist – must be introduced very early.

If the story is allowed more words, say 6,000, then a more leisurely pace can be adopted, though again every word has to do its job – creating the world, the atmosphere, the characterisation and the emotional journey of the protagonist.

Usually, the so-called literary short stories have more words while genre fiction writers are quite content to settle for less to do the job.

 
Regardless of length, the writer of short stories must show the reader what is important through the dramatic action of the plot and the other elements of the story, and not just explicitly tell the reader what to think.
 
The illusion of reality should always be sustained by the plot right up to the end. This reality is enhanced by character creation. Dialogue is a useful tool here, conveying mood and emotion. With the wordage permitted, the writer must suggest enough complexity in the individual to affect the reader’s emotions. Mood can be affected by time and place, and setting is important, though ideally this will be achieved with a few deft sketches rather than a full-blown travelogue. Creating a visual place enables the reader to ‘see’ the action more definitively, in effect to be part of the scene, involved in the drama.
 
Drama is perceived through the eyes of the protagonist. In short stories, it is preferable to limit the number of characters and viewpoints. The first-person narrator could be a major character or a minor character who is a good observer. The third-person narrator can be omniscient, seeing into all characters’ hearts and minds, or limited omniscient, seeing into one or, possibly, two characters.

Some novelists are not comfortable with the short story; in their case, there is not enough scope to create the world the writer perceives; only a novel will do. And the same goes for some readers: they can’t seem to get lost in a short piece while they can easily become immersed in a thick novel. To each their own.

 
Writing short fiction can help to hone your writing. You have to convey scene, character, plot, setting, and emotion within a concise form, so every word should be selected to that end. There is little room for extraneous padding or ‘fluff’. In some ways, certain short story writers are similar to poets – selecting the right word to convey the precise feeling or moment.
 
Just browsing along my bookshelves, these are some of the short story collections I can see:

Collected Stories by John Cheever, Roald Dahl, Ruth Rendell, Eudora Welty, E M Forster, O Henry, D H Lawrence, W Somerset Maugham, Elizabeth Bowen, Anton Chekov, Noel Coward, Saki, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Katherine Mansfield, Henry James, Elizabeth Spencer; Truman Capote – A Reader; Stanley Ellin – The Speciality of the House; Leslie Charteris – Señor Saint; Willa Catha – Great short works; Frederick Forsyth – The Veteran; Ring Lardner – Best Short Stories; James Joyce – Dubliners; Hugh Garner – Best Stories; Hermann Hesse – Stories from Five Decades; Elizabeth Spencer – Stories; August Derleth – The Return of Solar Pons; Arthur Conan Doyle – The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; Ernest Hemingway – The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories; Jeffery Deaver – Twisted; Joseph Conrad – Typhoon and other stories; Doris Lessing – This was the Old Chief’s Country, Stephen King – Everything’s Eventual, and G K Chesterton - Father Brown.  

This limited list doesn’t touch upon the horror, fantasy and science fiction shelves; these genres have spawned many hundreds of short stories.
 
If you haven’t tackled short story writing – read a collection or two and see what can be achieved by the masters such as those mentioned above, or Margaret Atwood, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson to name a few more.
 
Even today, short stories definitely have a story to tell.

Doris Lessing - R.I.P.

Doris Lessing, the Nobel prize-winning author of The Golden Notebook, among more than 50 other novels, has died at her London home aged 94.

Fifty books is an achievement, but it’s for the breadth of the work that she should be measured: novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. She was able to cross genres with relative ease.

The first novel of hers I read happened to be her debut, The Grass Is Singing (1950), an unflinching powerful account of colonial Africa.

Her most popular novel sequence or series was Children of Violence – Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, Landlocked and The Four-Gated City.

She was equally at home with short stories – and wrote many – and science fiction, with her 5-book series, the Canopus in Argos Archives; two of the latter were adapted for the opera by Philip Glass and Lessing wrote the librettos. A number of her books were filmed, including the dystopian Memoirs of a Survivor.


Mischievously, in 1984 she wrote two novels under the penname Jane Somers and they were initially turned down by her own publisher. She hadn't told them she was the author. ''I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.' If the books had come out in my name, they would have sold a lot of copies and reviewers would have said, 'Oh, Doris Lessing, how wonderful.'" They were published, eventually, showing that her writing skill won through past the gatekeepers. Under the pseudonym, the two books achieved instant remainder status, selling around 3,000 and 1,500 copies respectively. Of course when she came clean, their sales were a different story. Reminds anyone of J.K. Rowling?
She was born in Iran, brought up in the African bush in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia, as was) – where her first novel was set. She was a London resident for over fifty years.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature when she was 88, in 2007.

Why do you use a pen name?

I’ve been asked that over the years, as, doubtless, have many other authors who fall into that category. There are reasons.

Let me start by pointing out that my real name is Robert William Nicholson-Morton (no secret, it's on my website). Yes, quite a mouthful. When cheques were the normal form of payment, I hated signing them with that name – more like a squiggle. In truth, I hated signing cheques anyway!

When I joined the Royal Navy, my name-tally ended up as R.W.N-Morton. Having a double-barrelled name had its amusing side. When I appeared for duty one evening, the Leading Hand called out ‘Morton’ and I answered, ‘Here!’ Then he called out ‘Nicholson!’ So I said, ‘Here!’ I quickly added, ‘But I don’t want two jobs.’ Inevitably, in true forces spirit, I had to have a nickname. I became ‘Nik’ – I insisted on dropping the ‘c’ so I could sign my cartoons that way. (I thought there couldn’t be another Nik Morton around – and there wasn’t for some years, but now there is, and he’s a distinguished doctor in UK! But I got there first.)

That’s one reason to opt for a pen name; you’ve either got a common or familiar name or your name is already on the covers of published books. And although it doesn’t deter some authors, a long name is harder to fit onto a cover than a shorter snappier one.

I digress.

Way back in 1971, when I first started submitting short stories and articles, I wrote as Platen Syder. Being in the RN, I felt it prudent in case I ended up having some possibly controversial piece published. (I’d slightly adapted the name of someone I’d signed-up to join the Navy in Gosport, Platten Syder, who now lives in Truro, UK). Despite the name being in front of them, some magazine sub editors managed to give me the byline Playten Syder!

 

By the time I was publishing the magazine Auguries (http://auguries-magazine.blogspot.com.es/), I was using Nik Morton. (When courting my wife-to-be Jennifer, she knew me only as ‘Nik’ for a short while, and to this day I am still Nik to virtually everyone. Schizophrenic, who me?)

When I ran book reviews in my magazine, I had a small stable of reviewers; but the volume of books meant there were still too many for them to cope with. So I reviewed some books under the names Maggie Weaver, Nicola Williams as well as Nik Morton, to avoid the name monotony!

Eventually, after many years, my first novel acceptance was Pain Wears No Mask by Nik Morton, in 2007. Within a month or so afterwards, I wrote my first western and felt it should be under a different brand, so Ross Morton was invented. Ross was my late mother’s maiden name. Bear in mind that this was in the traditional publishing arena, where genre branding is considered important. The reasons for this are manifold: readers’ expectations possibly top the publishers’ list. If a reader buys a Nik Morton book, they expect it to be a crime novel. This is a little nonsensical if the cover and blurb of the book stated the story was a western, or a science fiction dystopian novel, surely? Nik Morton is considered a ‘brand’, in effect.

So quite a number of authors over the years have adopted pen names to get out of the ‘brand’ straitjacket – Ruth Rendell became Barbara Vine, for example, and recently J.K. Rowling hid behind Robert Galbraith for The Cuckoo’s Calling, perhaps because she felt she’d never get a dispassionate review as herself. Years ago, Doris Lessing did something similar with the pen name Jane Somers for two books. And yet there are exceptions, of course; she also successfully switched genre from ‘mainstream’ to science fiction with her Canopus in Argos sequence, eschewing a pen name; perhaps the success of her remarkable dystopian novel Memoirs of a Survivor helped.  

 

Nowadays, as any reader or writer knows, publishing is changing. There’s a recognition that maybe readers are happy to read an author no matter the genre she or he writes. Of course there will be those who won’t touch a western or a science fiction novel ever – or not again, not after reading a bad one. (You mean, there are no bad detective, mystery, romance novels? Fancy that!)

Things have become a little blurred for me and my pen name usage. I was commissioned to write a western, chose the title, Bullets for a Ballot, but then baulked at the byline – Nik Morton or Ross Morton. The publisher had published my short stories as Nik Morton, and that was the name most familiar to a US readership, so I clouded the issue and settled on Nik Morton!

I have a horror-crime-romance cross-over novel written as Robert Morton – Death is Another Life. My science fiction and horror short stories were published as both Platen Syder (or Playten Syder!) and Nik Morton, so the confusion persists.

Should a writer use a pen name, then? It’s his or her decision. There’s a great deal of excellent advice and background material on pen names to be found in the blog of Kristine Kathryn Rusch (former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and an incredibly prolific writer in several genres); just one instance: she wrote the popular novelization of The Tenth Kingdom as Kathryn Wesley. Her blog is: http://kriswrites.com/2013/10/02/the-business-rusch-pen-names/