Murdoch and Influence

I suppose I need to say that I loved Peter J. Conradi's book, Iris Murdoch, A Life. Conradi is not completely uncritical, but he loved Iris as I do, and was her good friend for many years, and he observed her closely. He has much to say about who and what she put into her books. For instance; he mentioned that she liked those books of her youth called boy's books or young men's books, particularly those by Robert Lewis Stevenson. He points out, that in The Black Prince, Bradley says at one point well along in the story that he wishes he had written Treasure Island.* I finished re-reading it, (T.I.), yesterday.....and, for some odd reason, I've started re-reading W.H. Hudson's Green Mansions.  Now, I would say that Green Mansions is a boy's book.  If I'm wrong I'm wrong. The original came out in 1916 but the edition I have, published in 1944, was illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer, and amounts to a great collection of period book illustration.  Kauffer, an American who lived and worked for many years in London,  [and was a friend of my father's] is more well known for his posters, a fact I just learned through Google. 

I was jogged into re-reading Hudson's book for the unlikely reason that it had some resonance for me with the Pearson character in Black Prince, in the fanciful take the two characters in each book have on young womanhood. 

I've also been working my way through A History of Structuralism, by Francois Dosse, translated by Deborah Glassman.  I've mentioned that Iris gives a nod here and there to her structuralist neighbors; she was a frequent visitor of Paris.  One such nod, I thought, was when Bradley's mistress's mother refers to him as cold, more in a historical way, ie Levi Strauss, then in an emotional way. TKTK Does she mean literally relating to L.-S. ?}  

*Treasure Island was a favorite book of mine too. My father gave me a copy that had been illustrated by his friend and mentor, N.C. Wyeth. 

The Black Prince

I decided to re-read The Black Prince for what I thought must be at least the third time. I don't doubt that I'm right about third time, but, oddly, I couldn't remember a damn thing about the book. I couldn't quite put it down to my old-age short-term memory loss either. It didn't occur to me until I started reading it though, that I was blocking it. But I certainly was.

I was given the book by a girlfriend, some 40 odd, (very odd), years ago.  I was new to the world of living sober, a subject I prefer to avoid, but here, some context is needed.  It was the first of several influential books, (influential to me), that she gave to me over our one, two, or three year relationship depending how you look at relationship.

She was a sort of a big cheese in the Art World and I was a sort of relative of a small cheese and a hanger-about in that world due to not having gone anywhere on my own and having been born there; in this particular artist's community.

I did remember that I fell in love with the book, and then with Iris, partly I suppose because I felt as though the book was about me, and partly because I was in love with the girlfriend.

The book is in a male voice, Iris's usual way, and is about two writers. The narrator is Bradley Pearson and his friend is the very successful Arnold Baffin. (Bradley is relatively unsuccessful, having published only one book.)  Bradley in fact might be a little nuts but you have the whole novel to make your decision on that. My own nutsiness, in this context, is part of my identification with Brad, and starts with this; that Bradley was my maternal grandmother's maiden name, and Pierson was my mother's maiden name. So in fact I am part Bradley and part Pierson. Not spelled the same way, but, over the years, her Pierson family have been somewhat free with the spelling of the last name. Mostly Pierson, but some went to Pearson and a few went to Peirson.

Bradley is a tortured soul and that has partly to due with the thought that he might be, as it has been intimated by some, a failed artist. (Here, we are using the term artist for novelist. This is normal for Iris. In all her novels writing equals art.)

I, until my mellowed old-age, was a tortured soul who felt that he was a failed artist. And like Bradley, that melodrama was all wrapped up in heroic fantasies of being an oh, so very serious artist, too serious to make it in this crass world; ugh. It was painful to think about but I thought about it all the time. That's why I had blocked what the book was about, and why it began to be painful re-reading the book; unwrapping the bad news one page at a time, almost afraid to go on, unblocking the block. 

The story goes from unrealistic bliss to nightmare horror and humiliation, something like life, at least as I knew it as a young man. The investment that Bradley* put into love was not dissimilar to the investment I had put in my girlfriend, the giver of the gift. Was it a gift? Or a road map of the way in which I was being caught in her flytrap? The postscripts, by several of the main characters, untie the Gordion Knot but without giving a clear diagnosis of Bradley's nutsiness, or showing any synchronic, or causal evidence.

I say synchronic I suppose to flag that I've been reading in and around Structuralism; Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes and etc. and also to say that it appears, from the way she has structured the book, that she had been watching the goings on in Paris over the decade leading up to the writing of B.P. and some of what they were up to might have rubbed off. 

P.S.  Perhaps I should add that I sound like Bradley Pierson when I write.  Wouldn't that be reason enough for someone who was way ahead of me in analysis of the Murdochian text to want to kill me?

*And Perhaps I should also add that I spent two semesters at Bradley University back in the early 1960s.