Dear Fellow Bookworm
My super-busy marking period has mercifully come to an end, but my free time remains greatly restricted as so much other work was displaced and all kinds of deadlines are looming. I have, however, been able to read more again and have enjoyed doing so a lot. One of the reading groups I am a member of selected a really interesting and, I think, important book this month – “Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are” by Robert Plomin. I first read this when it came out in 2018, but did so again this week in a version which included a more recent appendix in which the author answers some of the criticisms that reviewers made in respect of the original edition.
Robert Plomin is a pioneering geneticist who works at Kings College in London, so he really knows what he is talking about. And while a general reader such as myself will inevitably find some of the more scientifically sophisticated passages tough-going, this is for the most part a wonderfully accessible account of current developments in this fascinating scientific field.
The book is divided into two main parts. The first explains how behavioural geneticists over recent decades have gone about their work investigating how much of personality and how many of our personal characteristics, personal preferences and dispositions are inherited from our parents. The answer is a huge amount. It varies depending on the construct, but around half seems to be explained by our DNA and the remaining half by environmental factors and upbringing etc. The major studies that consistently demonstrate that this is the case include studying children who are adopted out of their original families and comparing them both with their adopted and birth parents. They tend to have just as much, if not more, in common with the latter as they do with the former. The other major types of studies involve pairs of twins, and particularly comparisons between the attributes of identical twins (with the same shared DNA) and non-identical twins who share an identical upbringing, but only 50% of their DNA. Sometimes studies have been conducted using twins who have been separated at birth and brought up in different adoptive families. It is all extraordinarily interesting.
Some of the points Plomin makes seem to me to amount mostly to science proving what we all know from our own personal experiences to be true, namely that we inherit a lot of personal attributes from our parents and that this extends way beyond how we look physically. This accords with the observations we make all the time within families, but Robert Plomin is right to point out that for many academics, saying such things has for much of the past hundred years been anathema and that he has been heavily criticised for questioning their assumptions.
This is all particularly interesting for me because much of my professional life has been spent dwelling alongside sociologists, for whom the mantra ‘everything is socially constructed’ is the starting point for all research. My doctorate focused on aspects of the work of the great French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu whose work I consider to be outstanding and of enormous help when looking to explain why some people are more successful than others in professional life. I was though determined to critique his work and not simply to replicate aspects of it, and to that end read Plomin’s work as well as other books and papers on genetics. I then wrote passages arguing that Bourdieu’s world view was incomplete because of his determination not to acknowledge or include in his analysis considerations of biology and inherited characteristics. My supervisor warned me that one of the sociologists who would be conducting my viva might not take too kindly to this aspect of my argument. So I spent two weeks preparing answers to any challenge to my view that nurture and nature both play a part in determining who does well in their careers. In the event it was not an issue. She just said that she was sure I was right about that, and went on to discuss other issues.
The second part of the book is more focused on DNA sequencing and the way that this can be used to make predictions about how people will be disposed to behave. This was more future-focused, and while really interesting in its conclusions, for me not quite as engaging as the first part.
Overall though the book is really well-worth reading, particularly the sections on what Plomin calls ‘the nature of nurture’ by which he means our tendency to react to social situations, including those we encounter during our upbringing, according to inherited preferences and dispositions. Some of us, for example, are naturally more shy, or robust, or generous than others. And this determines in part how we respond to situations. Different people approach the same types of situations differently. It is thus inaccurate always to think in terms of nature and nurture as being entirely separate from one another. It is all mixed up. Robert Plomin makes it all very clear and understandable.
‘Stoner’ by John Williams
Boy was this a good read. This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of this marvellous novel about the life of an English Literature teacher who spends his entire career working in the University of Missouri. It is gently told and beautifully written. Ultimately it is a pretty sad and pessimistic book, in some respects stressing the essential futility of our lives. But it is thought-provoking and completely compelling nonetheless. I also found it fascinating purely from the perspective of literary technique. Having read Virginia Woolf a lot recently and books about stream of consciousness approaches to the writing of fiction, it was really interesting to read a twentieth century classic that steers clear of such experimentation almost completely. John Williams (1922-1994) does not take us inside his character’s minds at all – or at least not directly. We are instead invited to infer what they are thinking and feeling from his descriptions of their actions and what they say to one another. More work is left for the reader to do. More is left for us to imagine. But as a reading experience this worked beautifully for me.
I was of course greatly helped in the endeavour by the fact that I am, like Stoner becomes, a somewhat cantankerous university teacher, now late in his career who loves his work and often uses it to escape from what he sometimes perceives as a somewhat dullish personal life. I really identified with him in a number of ways, particularly his refusal to conform with expected professional norms and the way he takes refuge in books when in a scrape. My personal life has not, thankfully, been as disappointing as Stoner’s. But there are elements of similarity that made this book particularly engaging for me.
It is not often that I shed a tear of sadness when reading a novel. It is happy stuff that tends to move me most. But I did when reading this little beautifully written passage, set at a formal retirement dinner for Stoner that he would really rather was not happening. It comes towards the end of the book:
He got to his feet, and realized that he had nothing to say. He was silent for a long time as he looked from face to face. He heard his voice issue flatly. ‘I have taught ….’ He said. He began again. ‘I have taught at this university for nearly forty years. I do not know what I would have done if I had not been a teacher. If I had not taught, I might have –‘ He paused as if distracted. Then he said, with a finality, ‘I want to tank you all for letting me teach’.
On the front cover of my Vintage Classics edition it says ‘The greatest novel you’ve never read’. High praise and may be a touch over-the-top. But ‘Stoner’ is certainly a great novel, and one I am delighted to have now read.
‘A Town Like Alice’ by Neville Shute
This was another enjoyable read. This month marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Shute’s classic novel ‘A Town Like Alice’ in 1950. It was hugely popular in its day and it is not hard to see why. It is engaging and charming, as well as being somewhat original in various ways. The first half of the book is essentially an epic love story that strides the globe. A British woman and an Australian man meet quite briefly in awful circumstances in Japanese-occupied Malaya during the Second World War. They develop a connection that neither is able to shake off and each goes looking for the other. However, this is no conventional romantic novel, because the narrative switches direction in the second half to focus on the post-war economic development of a small outback settlement in Queensland called Willstown, the aim being to turn it into somewhere like Alice Springs - hence the title ‘A Town Like Alice’. I enjoyed it a lot because of this additional element that complements the romance. It is also notable, and for this reason possibly unfashionable today, because of the absence of villains. Everyone, aside from the odd Japanese soldier early on in the book, is basically a good person doing his or her best. Their struggles are against nature and circumstances rather than other human beings. For me that gave it a touch of realism that was refreshing. I also liked the absence of swearing and bad behaviour generally. Everyone is polite, professional and thoughtful. “My word” is as strong as the language gets.
The second original feature is that the story is narrated at one remove by a solicitor who for various reasons becomes intimately involved in the evolving story. We thus hear about it all from his perspective. At times this stretches credulity, when for example casual conversations are included between people in Australia that a London-based solicitor could not possibly be in a position to recite verbatim. But this imperfection need to distract from the enjoyment of the book.
Neville Shute (1899 – 1960) was a British man who had two parallel careers as an author and as an aeronautical engineer. He emigrated to Australia with his family after the war, and these experiences all clearly informed the book. There are some musings on engineering included, but they add rather than detract on the whole. In fact there is quite a lot of factual material spliced about the narrative about all kinds of things including legal matters. The portrayal of aboriginal people grates to the modern mind, but is I am sure very typical of the way white Australians thought and acted at the time the story was written. There is an authenticity which serves to educate as well as entertain.
‘A Town Like Alice’ has at its heart is the most wonderful and impressive heroine in Jean Paget, based I understand on a real person. It is essentially her story and, like her, the book is a life enhancer and one that will stay with you for a long time after you have read it.
‘Brideshead Revisited’ by Evelyn Waugh
This week marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication in 1945 of one of absolute favourite novels. If forced to choose the one I love more than any other, it would be a toss up between this, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Barchester Towers’. They are all wonderful, but Brideshead is unquestionably to one I have re-read most. Like the others I first read it as a teenager and it was one of my first introductions to the world of serious adult literature. In my day I don’t think there really was such a thing as YA literature. I guess there was ‘Lord of the Rings’, but fantasy has never really interested me, so in my recollection I moved pretty seamlessly when I was about thirteen from Arthur Ransome and Jennings & Darbyshire to Jane Austen. Trollope followed soon afterwards, and then Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966). There was also, of course, the amazing television adaptation of Brideshead which I still consider to be among the very best ever made, largely because with the exception of some minor omissions, it remains utterly faithful to the original novel. The screenwriters just set about translating the book to the screen in a way they just don’t seem prepared to do nowadays. It was sumptuous with a fantastic cast and all filmed on location. They also gave it time. The series was broadcast over twelve weeks, with an extra-long first episode which is probably my favourite ever piece of television. As was the case for many people, it left a huge impression on me, and I read the book at the same time as I watched the broadcast.
Why do I love ‘Brideshead Revisited’ so much? It is hard to sum up. First and foremost it is the writing. It is just beautifully done. The narrator, Charles Ryder, is a middle aged man looking back during a time of war on his salad days and the inter-war period with loving, romantic nostalgia. The spine of the story concerns his relationship with different members of the Marchmain family, an aristocratic clan of English Catholics who live in Brideshead Castle and have all kinds of personal problems and issues to deal with. The story extends over twenty or more years, starting in Oxford where Charles befriends Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of the family, moving on into the 1930s when the narrative shifts to his later relationship with Sebastian’s sister Julia. Catholicism looms large throughout and ensures that the book is so very much more than a romantic Cinderella-type tale. There are also several minor characters, many simultaneously comic and saddish, who populate the story. All are compelling, memorable, and to me, iconic, as are the various set pieces through which the story is told. Evelyn Waugh considered Brideshead to be his finest work, and while some dislike its languid sentimentality and its fundamentally conservative perspective, it is hard to resist its charm and literary brilliance.
Evelyn Waugh wrote most of it during a largely unwanted break from active service during the Second World War. He retired to an unremarkable little hotel, which is still in operation. It is called Easton Court, a short distance from Chagford in Devon, close to where I now live. It was a regular haunt for him and, like some of his other books, Brideshead was written in the sitting room there. He completed the work during the first half of 1944, before returning to the army. It is a masterpiece.
I would also heartly recommend Paula Byrne’s book about Brideshead. It is a very well-researched slice of biography focusing on the real people who served as semi-models for some of the leading characters, as well as Waugh’s life in the years running up to the novel’s publication.
With very best wishes
Your Actual Bookworm