Jean Rhys, Isaac Asimov, and some nightmare scenarios

Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work mentions two incidents in one of Jean Rhys's novels that could be classed as small-scale nightmare scenarios.

I was reminded of this recently by something I read about tunnels in Isaac Asimov's memoirs; I decided to follow up Carole Angier's leads and look at the novel; the material I found has inspired a few comments.

Sasha's first nightmare 
Carole Angier refers to a horrible dream that Sasha, the main character in Jean Rhys's very depressing autobiographical novel Good Morning Midnight (1939), has on her return to Paris. This is the relevant extract from the novel:

“I am in the passage of a tube station in London. Many people are in front of me; many people are behind me. Everywhere there are placards printed in red letters: This Way to the Exhibition, This Way to the Exhibition. But I don't want the way to the exhibition -I want the way out. There are passages to the right and passages to the left, but no exit sign. Everywhere the fingers point and the placards read: This Way to the Exhibition...The steel finger points along a long stone passage. This Way - This Way - This Way to the Exhibition....”

This is uncannily similar to my own experiences in one or two huge tube stations in London. I still remember the crowds of people in the underground passages walking along like zombies, the long tunnel-like corridors, the flights of stairs, the inadequate and misleading signage and how it all became more and more stressful.

I followed the signs up some steps, along some corridors, round some corners and ended up where I started! I remember thinking to myself, “I don't want the Northern Line, I want the way out”! 

Being unable to find the exit can easily turn into a nightmare. It can feel like being trapped in Hell with no way out. I think that Jean Rhys was remembering her own experience of the London tube system when she described Sasha's bad dream.

Sasha's second nightmare 
The second nightmare incident that Carole Angier mentions happens when Sasha's boss asks her to take a letter to a certain place in the building where she works. She doesn't understand where she has to go but accepts the errand anyway. 

Sasha immediately does the wrong thing:

“I turn and walk blindly through a door. It is a lavatory. They look sarcastic as they watch me going out by the right door.“

Something about Rachel Ferguson and The Brontës Went to Woolworths

I first heard about Rachel Ferguson's novel with the intriguing title some years ago, but only recently got around to reading it.

The title is a little misleading: the Brontës appear only briefly in the book and then only in ghost form. 

I found The Brontës Went to Woolworths to be of interest more for the connections and coincidences than for the characters and story.   

The book, which was first published in 1931 and is set in the London of the time, features a bohemian, eccentric family consisting of a widowed woman and her three daughters. They all participate in an ongoing game in which they make up stories about and have imaginary relationships and conversations with real people they have never met. 

This game and the effect that it has on their lives will be covered in a future article; first comes some miscellaneous material of interest.

The Celtic connection 
The last name of the family in The Brontës Went to Woolworths is Carne. The three daughters are Deirdre, Katrine and Sheil.

All of these names have Celtic connections.

Carne is a name of Gaelic origin; it means a pile of stones or a cairn.

Deirdre is an Irish name; Katrine and Sheil are Scottish place names. The girls' father was born on the Isle of Skye.

The Celtic heritage might explain why the girls can see ghosts and their father could see nature spirits.

Ferguson is also a name of Gaelic origin, and ghosts appear in some of Rachel Ferguson's other books.

Brontë connections and the Carne coincidence 
Like many other writers featured on here, May Sinclair for example, Rachel Ferguson was very interested in the Brontës and produced works about and/or inspired by them. She probably got the idea of siblings who share an imaginary world from Brontë biographies. 

Jean Rhys: is psychology enough to explain everything?

The previous two articles in the series inspired by Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work were created to answer one big question and one small one. One article gave some good reasons for reading such a depressing book; the other looked into the possibility that Diana Wynne Jones had used material from the biography in her book Black Maria. 

The time has now come to attempt to answer the question of questions: does Carole Angier's psychological interpretation of Jean Rhys's personality, behaviour and experiences cover and provide an explanation for everything? 

The connections and familiar metaphysical features and elements covered in previous articles support the idea that certain unseen influences were at work in Jean Rhys's life, but it is good practice to start with the most obvious explanations and move on and widen the enquiry only if these are found to be unsatisfactory.

Just as Aunt Maria operates on three levels, Jean Rhys and her life can be looked at from three viewpoints: the psychological, what might be called the occult, and something in between the two.

Carole Angier's psychological viewpoint is the first to be considered.

Jean Rhys's infantile personality
Carole Angier makes many insightful remarks about Jean Rhys and provides much biographical material to support her ideas. 

She makes the point that Jean Rhys never grew up. This is very obvious: we do not need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that one! 

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XVI: J. B. Priestley's Low Notes on a High Level

The novelist J. B. Priestley has been mentioned both as a reader of and contributor to the Everyman Library and as the author of Angel Pavement, the likely inspiration for Stella Gibbons's novel My American. 

One of his minor works is a little book called Low Notes on a High Level, which was first published in 1954. 

Priestley called Low Notes a 'frolic'. It is very light; it is amusing and original. 

The plot is preposterous; it features some huge, bizarre, imaginary musical instruments that can play very low bass notes. Also included are some colourful characters, a fictional Scandinavian country, classical music on the radio and a pirate broadcasting station run by a freedom-loving rebel. 

Unlike some of the other featured books, Low Notes does not contain much quotable material. The story needs to be read as a whole: most extracts would not do justice to the book as they wouldn't mean very much or seem very amusing without the surrounding context.

Satire in Low Notes on a High Level
Priestley was a strong critic of many aspects of contemporary society. In Low Notes he took the opportunity to satirise practices of the day that he disapproved of and people he had a low opinion of. 

Much of Priestley's criticism of certain organisations and the people associated with them was inspired by his experience of working for the BBC as a radio presenter during the Second World War.

He disliked politicians, pretentiousness and bureaucracy; he rather despised conformists, people who are types rather than individuals and herd members who don't think for themselves - like these two committed consumers for example:

“If the Coronation had lasted for twenty-two hours on TV, they would never have taken their eyes off the screen, even at the risk of going blind and dotty. Always they did as they were told, Enid asking for Shifto the magic washing powder, Bernard demanding Filter-Dung the new cigarette.”

Cults and the cutting of personal connections: Part IV

As mentioned in Part III, the cutting of personal connections between cult members and non-members works both ways: it is not always the members who do the dropping.  

This breaking of bonds can cause problems and dilemmas no matter which side does it. This article covers a few more aspects of this painful subject.

Problems on the cult side
The most obvious problem here is that cult members who are forbidden from associating with their families and friends will not be able to get financial or other forms of support for the cause or movement from them.

One way round this is for the cult to arrange supervised phone calls or meetings. Selected members are told what to say and ask for, and another member listens in or is present to ensure that they follow instructions and stick to the script. This may work, at least for a while, if the family wants contact on any terms.

A compromise solution is to apply the strictest rules and the tightest controls only to hard-core members, the upper levels or the inner circle, with less-dedicated members, supporters and other 'inferiors' free to associate with anyone they want to.

Public relations are another problem. I used to wonder why a particular cult-like organisation would order many of its senior members to stop seeing their families when this would entail making enemies out of former friends, give ammunition to opponents and result in bad publicity that might alienate potential supporters and damage the cause. 

One tactic cults use here is denial. They may insist for example that it isn't true that members are forced to cut all outside relationships. Such blatant lying may work for a while – I fell for some of it myself in the early days – but people now have access to social media, defectors' stories and the Internet so are more educated and less likely to be fooled.

The mystery of Jean Rhys, Aunt Maria, and Diana Wynne Jones

The article about Carole Angier's doubly-depressing biography of the novelist Jean Rhys includes an attempt to answer a big question the book raises: if it has such a bad effect, why read it and why comment on it? 

I said something relevant to this question a long time ago in the first article about Diana Wynne Jones's witch Aunt Maria: I persevere with some infuriating and/or depressing books because there are lessons to be learned and points and connections to be made from them. 

This article attempts to answer a small question that arose recently when I noticed a few similarities between Jean Rhys as described in Carole Angier's biography and the fictional Aunt Maria: could Diana Wynne Jones have been influenced by Jean Rhys: Life and Work when she was writing Black Maria aka Aunt Maria? 

After dealing with some of the more significant topics connected with Jean Rhys, I decided to investigate the possibility that Diana Wynne Jones had read Carole Angier's biography and, consciously or unconsciously, copied a little of the material for her children's book. 

I started by re-reading Black Maria in the light of what I had recently learned about Jean Rhys; some of the common elements I found this time around seemed worth highlighting - and more than just coincidence.

Wheelchairs and walking
Both Jean Rhys and Aunt Maria pretended to be more disabled than they really were. 

The first article about Aunt Maria mentions a scene in which the horrible old witch, who is supposedly can barely walk and spends much of her time in a wheelchair, is quite able to get up and go to the window when she sees something that angers her. 

When I first read this, I was immediately reminded of something I had read many years earlier about Jean Rhys while looking into the Jane Eyre connection: when she became angry with her assistant, she left her wheelchair in a flash to run to the door and lock it. 

Isaac Asimov, public libraries, and National Science Fiction Day

This article for January 2nd is the last in a string of lighter posts for the holiday season. It will soon be time to get back to the depressing biographies and other heavy topics!

January 2nd is the official birthday of the great - if not the greatest - science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who was featured in an article that marked the 25th anniversary of his death. There is also an article about a never forgiven or forgotten brushing-off experience that he had in common with Noel Streatfeild.

Isaac Asimov and public libraries 
Just like many other writers, Terry Pratchett for example, Isaac Asimov was a great user of public libraries as a boy. He learned far more from library books than he did at school, as did I and many other self-educators.

His autobiography In Memory Yet Green contains some details of his early dealings with public libraries, which he first joined at the age of six. Just as I did, he managed to wangle cards from two different libraries so got twice the normal ration of books; just I did, Asimov was soon able to get access to the adult section.

Isaac Asimov read voraciously to satisfy his craving for knowledge, but he was not indiscriminate. I could have written this myself:

“I wanted excitement and action in my stories rather than introspection, soul-searching, and unpleasant people. So if I did reach for fiction in the library it was likely to be a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini...(Usually, when I discovered one book by a prolific author I found I liked I would methodically go through all the others by him I could find.)“

Isaac Asimov remembers public libraries 
Even though he moved on to academic and other professional libraries and eventually established a reference library of his own at home, Isaac Asimov never forgot the huge debt that he owed to public libraries.