Apocalyptic Golden Syrup
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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I have to be very careful about this one. If I start recommending Wolf Solent (1929) by John Cowper Powys, I run the risk of people pushing its burnt ashes through my letterbox. I've never known such divided opinion over reading matter. One girlfriend said she didn't want it to end, another threw her copy at me and told me never to waste her time with him again. But she still persevered to the end, and has subsequently told me she thinks it's a Bloke Book. The Penguin blurb on my Modern Classics copy (with its wonderfully appropriate John Nash painting on the cover) says that Wolf Solent has been 'described as one of the few great apocalyptic novels of our time' and the Spectator said it was 'A stupendous and rather glorious book...as beautiful and strange as an electric storm'.. What's it all about? Well, a young man returns to Dorset after ten years in London and works as a literary assistant not far from the school where his father had been the History Master. Its narrative is sometimes overwhelming, but underneath it all is a sense of unease that starts you thinking 'I've seen / heard / felt / experienced that somewhere'. And he mentions a Lyle's Golden Syrup can. But although it was written in the USA, it is a very, very English novel. An Unmitigated English novel in fact. Here's just a little taste:He loved the muslin curtains over the parlour-windows, and the ferns and flower-pots on the window-sills. He loved the quaint names of these little toy houses- names like Rosecot, Woodbine, Bankside, Primrose Villa. He tried to fancy what it would be like to sit in the bow-window of any one of these, drinking tea and eating bread-and-honey, while the spring afternoon slowly darkened towards twilight.
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