In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels since 1923. The editors of Modern Library named the work as one of the greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century.
That is definitely not the novel I read. Further described as a “mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque,” I found it much more picaresque than philosophical. Indeed, when the philosophical started to punch its way through in the closing pages, it seemed woefully out of place.
“Why do you say that, Jake?” said Hugo. “Every man must have a trade. Yours is writing. Mine will be making and mending watches, I hope, if I’m good enough.”
“And what about the truth?” I said wildly. “What about the search for God?”
“What more do you want,” said Hugo. “God is a task. God is detail. It all lies close to your hand.” He reached out and took hold of a tumbler which was standing on the table beside his bed. The light from the door glinted on the tumbler and seemed to find an answering flash in Hugo’s eyes, as I tried in the darkness to see what they were saying.
“All right,” I said, “all right, all right, all right.”
“You’re always expecting something, Jake,” said Hugo.
“Maybe,” I said. I was beginning to find the conversation a burden.
Yeah. Me, too. The sudden reference to truth and God, especially from Jake who, up to that point, had seemed consumed not with such an existential quest, but with his picaresque adventures, from “the kidnapping of a movie-star canine to the staging of a political riot on a film set.”
I put on my coat and began to walk slowly down the main stairs. My head was in turmoil. The side of the building which faced the bicycle yard had lights upon it which were kept burning all night. Anyone trying to enter from the yard would be clearly in view from the street. The ends of the transepts came into the radius of the street lamps, and the main building had its own row of lamp posts, which encircled the main courtyard. There remained the transept gardens, which were wells of darkness. Most of the windows which opened onto these gardens were the windows of patients’ rooms. It was impossible to think of entering through one of these; for even if I had had the nerve to fo now and satisfy myself that one of these windows was open, I had certainly not the nerve to re-enter through it at two a.m. and run the risk of being pursued by the screams of some nervous inmate. There were other possibilities, such as the scullery window of Corelli I. But this would fall too much under the eye of the Corelli I night sister, whose room was next door to the scullery; and the same objection applied to the other windows which led from the garden into the administrative rooms of the ward. My only hope lay in the more anonymous and public parts of the transept, round about the Transept Kitchen. It was true that there was likely to be somebody in and around the kitchen all night; but there were a number of cloakrooms and storerooms round about which seemed to be derelict and unvisited even during the day, and whose windows lay at the very end of the garden, where it would be darkest.
On reaching the bottom of the stairs I turned, with an air of conspicuous casualness, towards the Transept Kitchen. When I am up to something I find it very hard to realize that I probably look no different from the way I look on other occasions. I felt sure that the expression of my face must be betraying me, and whenever I passed anyone in the corridor I turned this telltale surface in the other direction. I walked firmly past the door of the kitchen. The upper half of the door was made of plain glass, and out of the corners of my eyes I could see figures moving about within. I selected a room two or three doors farther on, and turned into it sharply. I had remembered right. It was a storeroom, against each wall of which the iron frames of bedsteads were leaning ten deep. I closed the door quietly behind me and walked down the aisle in the middle of the room. In a square of sun and shade the garden was revealed and the rows of cherry trees. The shadow from the Corelli side fell sharply across the lawn and cut it into two triangles of contrasting greens. I stood for a moment looking out. Then I unlatched the window.
It was a simple casement window with one catch halfway up the frame, and a perforated bar at the bottom which regulated the aperture. I unpinned the window and undid the catch, opening the window an inch or two, so that the catch rested against the glass on the outside. I didn’t want the window to look as if it were undone; and on the other hand I wanted to be certain that I should be able to pull it open from the outside when the time came. It took me some minutes to satisfy myself that both these conditions were met. Then I marked the position of the window carefully in relation to the rows of trees. After that I went back and listened at the door until I was sure that there was no one in the corridor. I emerged, closed the door, and walked back towards Corelli. No one had seen me. A moment later I was leaving the building.
Too much of the novel is this -- long stretches of inner monologue, describing the most mundane of activities. Like the narrator, the prose wanders, often and obviously looking for a point and, more frequently, failing to find one. I know. I’ve written my share of that kind of fiction, too.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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