#71 THE DEVIL'S OWN WORK REVIEW

 The Devil’s Own Work by Alan Judd 

The last two novels I’ve plowed through are Lolita and Men and Women: the former, a fireworks show of wordplay, imagery and irony: the latter, a 1200-page verbal carpet-bombing that makes Ulysses read like One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.  So, imagine my relief upon reading the first page of Alan Judd’s novella with a meticulous, spare style that jibes perfectly with the story’s unnerving creepiness. 

The title comes from a sentence at the midpoint of the book when the narrator writes, “I do now believe that anything that confuses reality and unreality, or that attempts to equate the two, is the devil’s own work.” The observation grows out of the narrator’s general view of post-modern fiction’s embrace of “fictive realism”, but it also applies specifically to the evolution of the writings, first, of the venerated “Old Man” Oliver M. Tyrrel and, later, his protégé, Edward.  

Yet, it also applies to the narrator’s own account. Author Alan Judd numbers among his six published works a biography of Ford Madox Ford, whose novel “The Good Soldier” contains what many consider to be the best example of the unreliable narrator in English literature. As Alan Judd’s more subtly unreliable narrator notes, “Contrary to what is often said, the everyday language we use for describing what happens to us is quite well suited to its purpose; it is—or can be made to be—precise. It is much more difficult to describe the half-world in which things half-happen, in which something may become visible only when it is looked for, audible only when listened for, present only when expected.” 

The narrator’s language describing meals and meetings is nothing if not precise. On the other hand, his account of Edward’s triumphant career (in the eyes of the general public) and subsequent decline (in his own eyes and eventually the general public’s) is one of utter unreality, based on the discovery that Edward’s output is a product of a mysterious manuscript bequeathed by Tyrrel just before his death and the control exerted by the ageless consort Eudoxie. After all, this wild unreality must be real because as the narrator says in the opening line of the book, “I had it, you see, from Edward himself….” The result of the narrator’s mash-up of the real and the unreal to describe “the half-world in which things half-happen” is, of course, The Devil’s Own Work.  

***** 

ADDITIONAL BOOK: Griffin and Sabine 

Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock 

The most extraordinary flight of imagination since Antonius Diogenes’ Cloud Cuckoo Land.  

***** 

Tom Wells