The Book Tower

I feel agitated; but I don’t want to be, because it isn’t right. I want to get that quiet rapture back, feel again, just as before, that fierce and unnamed passion I used to feel when I looked at my books. Please let the wind of desire that rose from the multi-coloured spines of those books catch me up again, let it melt the heavy, lifeless lead weight that is there somewhere inside me, and awaken in me once again the impatience of the future, the soaring delight in the world of the intellect – let it carry me back into the ready-for-anything lost world of my youth.
I sit and wait.

For a reader weaned on Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, I’ve put off All Quiet on the Western Front until now. Erich Remarque’s 1929 anti-war novel has escaped me for only the foolish belief that I didn’t need to read another First World War novel. I was wrong.

All Quiet on the Western Front is particularly potent for being a German anti-war novel, suggesting why many are drawn towards joining the army for the rewards of superiority it can give, personified in the story by Remarque’s bullying drill sergeant. The novel hints that dominant behaviour is an ugly and contagious part of human nature, one of the reasons why the Nazis were probably intent on burning the book; actions which then led to the author’s subsequent exile. As a young German soldier drawn to enlist with his fellow classmates mainly at the insistence of their schoolteacher, the fictional character Paul Bäumer narrates this absorbing, harrowing and thought provoking book. His nationality and the side he fights for matters not; as Bäumer quickly realises, there is no clearly defined enemy in the insanity of trench warfare. But that a German writer has produced such a powerful work makes it all the more poignant.

Remarque served in the First World War, although this novel is only partly autobiographical. He spent some time in a military hospital, and the scenes where Bäumer is treated are particularly convincing. The bloodshed of the battlefield is as upsetting as you might expect, and I found the realism of these scenes particularly disturbing for a novel written in 1929. Not because this is little more than a decade after the events took place, but because the writing is fresh, modern and full of grim insight. Bäumer and his friends discuss the reasons for the conflict they are trapped in but come to no conclusions. They don’t really understand the reasons why they were fighting that war. I certainly don’t really grasp why the First World War was fought either. Do you?

All Quiet on the Western Front goes much further than just graphically depicting the horrors of war. The quotation I’ve opened with is from Bäumer’s spell of leave, where he visits his family home. Sitting in his room, he realises how the war has removed him from the true, free living individual he once was. He has no interest in picking up the books that once absorbed him. It’s a very moving and sad scene. There’s also several passages where Remarque dwells on the unkindness between supposedly fellow comrades. Returning to the character of the bullying drill sergeant, he follows Bäumer and his friends as they lie in wait for and subsequently beat up the man who has made thier lives a misery. They feel refreshed and vindicated; Remarque leaves it up to the reader to decide if their actions are justifiable. Similarly, another friend of Bäumer’s is placed in charge of a Home Guard platoon to discover the very teacher who urged his pupils to go to war amongst his ranks. More ritual humiliation follows, and again Bäumer and his peers see it as fitting treatment.

Although this is a novel that fiercely opposes war, it is knowing enough to question the contradictions of human nature and ends on a sour note when Bäumer concedes that the generation following his will quickly forget the 1914-1918 war, or at least find its imprortance muted. There is a particularly telling episode where, seperated from his allies and taking refuge in a shell hole in no-man’s-land, he stabs to death a French soldier to save himself. He’s mortified by his actions, attempts to save the dying soldier, eventually mulling over the contents of the corpse’s wallet. This doesn’t last long; self-preservation takes over and Bäumer realises he must forget the identity of the dead soldier and return himself safely to his trench. Life goes on. The impatience of the future.

Comments [3]

Anyone of a certain age will remember the very strange television programme called Monkey. This Chinese TV series was dubbed into English and aired by the BBC in the late 70s/early 80s. Each week three characters called Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy had mad adventures and jumped about. That was about as far as it went, and if you were a fan of Monkey you probably also liked The Water Margin.

My ears pricked up recently when I heard that Damon Albarn had written a stage musical based on the 16th Century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en. Monkey: Journey to the West continues the Monkey legend and features artwork by Jamie Hewlett, who was responsible for the Gorillaz look and feel.

I’ve been a fan of Albarn for ages. His music, through Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad and the Queen has always been excellent and inventive. He’s also never shy to push the boat out, and this latest project sees him leaving the shore completely. The album Journey to the West was released this week and I admit my first impressions were ones of bafflement. I guess I was expecting an extension to Gorillaz, but that’s not the case. Whilst the two albums Albarn made with that band were pretty experimental at times, Monkey makes them look like Bucks Fizz records. It’s challenging to say the least, Albarn doesn’t sing on it and it largely comes across as Brian Eno after too much rice wine. I kind of gave up on it all last night. I even emailed a friend saying the album was rubbish.

But gingerly I put the album back on again tonight (or, in the modern way, fired it up in iTunes). The headache that’s been bugging me all week and making me grumpy has almost cleared and I’m finding fresh and original things in this weird music. What’s a barrier is the lack of the visual feast I would imagine that the original stage show was, but this is still a worthy addition to the Albarn canon. It’s not one for the dinner party, even if you’re cooking for die-hard Damon Albarn fans – they’re likely to have the same first impressions as me. But it goes in the grower category, and I’ve already identified two really stand out tracks, Heavenly Peach Banquet and Monkey Bee. This is a record I might be listening to for a long time to make sense of. At least until his next project comes along.

Comment

From Booking Through Thursday:

What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My mother used to take me to the library. I remember it being a very long walk, across the iron bridges that crossed the railway, down an endless leafy street, through a park and past the milk depot. A really, really long walk for a child but one that planted a desire for books within me (like a thirsty man crawling across a desert towards an oasis, I knew that there was something worthwhile at the end of my trek).

I was always deposited in the children’s library as my mother disappeared into the main section. Left to my own devices, I would usually drift towards the work of Spike Milligan and Dr Seuss. I went for humour in those days and these were my favourites. My mother would, on returning to collect me, urge me to borrow the Just William books that she’s enjoyed in her childhood. I sometimes did, and enjoyed them too. My only other earliest memories are factual books, the inevitable dinosaurs and astronomy. I remember being particularly fond of one giant textbook entitled What Makes it Go.

Taught exemplary library manners, I would present my borrowing selection to the librarian (four at any one time I recall) all neatly opened at the correct page and ready for stamping. Other library etiquette, such as keeping quiet at all times, appears to have come to me instinctively. This seemed to put me in good stead as, ten years or so later, I applied for and was accepted as a Saturday assistant in the same library. I didn’t work in the children’s library, and was instead left to deal with the pensioners and their hardback mysteries, and the Dads of schoolmates who would sometimes recognise me. It was a pretty laid back job, although I always fell down on one thing. People returning their books late were subject to fines but I always felt awkward making them pay. People penalised to savouring their books just a little bit too long? It didn’t seem fair.

These days I’m a slave to Amazon. I visit a library only rarely and I sometimes feel a pang of guilt; I should browse and I should borrow. Although I suspect I would over-borrow, take too long to read and end up being fined. I did introduce my daughter to the library in her early years and admit being put off by the shelves of DVDs that have the habit of enticing children away from books. And because of this we now tend to treat our local Waterstones as library-ish. You can’t borrow, but you sure can spend a long time hiding in a corner and reading.

Comments [7]