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Hangover Square - CaB Book Club 2

Started by Smeraldina Rima, December 05, 2017, 03:36:40 PM

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Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton is broken into eleven parts and in Penguin Modern Classics it runs to 281 pages. We'll aim to read it over three weeks starting next monday.

11-17 December: Parts 1-3

18-24 December: Parts 4-7

25-31 December: Parts 8-11

You can write anything about the book at any time but include a warning when it seems right. The idea is to discuss the parts we're reading through the week and by Sunday or Monday you might want to say more about the section that's just gone without worrying about giving anything away.

So far these posters have said they are interested:

Howj Begg
DukeDeMondo
Janie Jones
Neville Chamberlain maybe
selectivememory maybe
Poisson Du Jour
shiftwork2
ASFTSN who is nearly at the end
Smeraldina Rima

Everyone else is welcome too.

I know this is a popular book around here so there might be posters who can add to the thread having already read the book.

'A story of Darkest Earl's Court'

Will join in too, been meaning to read this for a bit.


ASFTSN

I've finished it now but don't want to say much before others chip in at the proper schedule. It is an excellent book, one of the best novels I've read this year. That cover Smeraldrina posted really nails the vibe-poor old Bone. I wanted to have a beer and a friendly chat with him but my suspicion is I'd discreetly try and hide if I saw him too often in the pubs. Excellent character study.

The Roofdog


Jerzy Bondov

I started this on Wednesday and now I've nearly finished. I'm sorry, I really did try to slow down but I couldn't stop myself. It's brilliant. I've got some notes though, will share when appropriate.

Large Noise

Just read Part 1:

Immediately put in mind of Donnie Darko by his Dead Moods and their associated criminal impulses. Though it's funny how he's still utterly feckless even in his altered state. He can't even really bring himself to go mental, he just walks about doing fuck all. 

The stuff with Netta, Peter and Mickey is very well observed. That situation of a social circle which revolves around an exceptionally attractive woman is painfully familiar. The stuff about Mickey taking the heat off everyone else's bad behaviour by always being the most outrageously drunk is bang-on too, I think most groups of drinking buddies have someone like that who they keep around for that very reason.

The shift of the narrator's point of view is interesting, slipping into 2nd person to convey George's neurosis when he tries to reassure himself; "it was pretty obvious that you were not a criminal maniac".

And the way Netta functions like an addiction for him. He can't get a job because he doesn't want to leave her to the others. He knows she doesn't really respect him but he has to keep turning up and giving it a go. I know that feeling of having a crush on someone and just wanting to be in their presence, even though you've got no intention of making a move and don't expect anything to happen, because while you're with them it's technically possible and you're at least in the 'maybe' headspace rather than the 'definitely not' torment. The way he borrows money from his aunt just to spend it on dinner for her put me in mind of that girl from the recent opioid episode of Louis Theroux.

There's also quite a strong millenial 'failure to launch' ring to these characters. People in their 20's and 30's borrowing money from/ living with their families and just doing nothing whatsoever. Maybe  they're just the archetypal young(ish) people during an economic downturn. Like his only real ambition is to go live somewhere quiet with the woman he's in love with, but this is regarded as an absurd notion by his peer group. It's that thing of not being able to achieve the things you're brought up to expect for yourself.

Janie Jones

Ah, this is great, this book. No spoilers in this post, I'm just saying I feel like Middlemarch was eating my worthy greens and this is a lovely boozy, terribly unhealthy trifle for dessert. As noted by a contemporaneous critic in the edition I've got and Jerzy above, you have to ration yourself because it's easy to gobble it up. Great choice for book club, I look forward to seeing what everyone's comments are.

Neville Chamberlain

Finally managed to get to my local second-hand English bookshop and they had a few Patrick Hamiltons...but, of course, not Hangover Square. I'm going to try in a couple of other places though and, if I find it, read along, though probably slightly behind you lot anyway...

ASFTSN

I feel like when Littlejohn is introduced, he seems like the epitome of "decent bloke".  I really, really liked him.  How much of that is down to comparing him to the shower of cunts that Bone normally hangs out with, I'm not quite sure. 

Kindred spirits being a lifeline to a drowning man crops up several times throughout this, and it really touched me whenever it happened - the bank clerk, the staff at the Brighton hotel - the way the protagonist interacts with them is merely pleasantly normal, but he sees them all as saints for bothering to give him the time of day in a courteous manner.  That's how cynicism and dulling routine can affect your worldview when you're so used to hanging out with an utterly toxic crowd.  Some people let it seep into affecting their attitude towards the 'normies' that don't spend all their days getting fucked in pubs and disliking each other - I'm glad Bone wasn't one of those people.

Jerzy Bondov

The sections where Bone's mind has cracked read a lot like Limmy's short stories, especially in That's Your Lot. I wonder if he's read it? Seems right up his street.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Large Noise on December 10, 2017, 06:29:30 PM
And the way Netta functions like an addiction for him. He can't get a job because he doesn't want to leave her to the others. He knows she doesn't really respect him but he has to keep turning up and giving it a go. I know that feeling of having a crush on someone and just wanting to be in their presence, even though you've got no intention of making a move and don't expect anything to happen, because while you're with them it's technically possible and you're at least in the 'maybe' headspace rather than the 'definitely not' torment. The way he borrows money from his aunt just to spend it on dinner for her put me in mind of that girl from the recent opioid episode of Louis Theroux.

There's also quite a strong millenial 'failure to launch' ring to these characters. People in their 20's and 30's borrowing money from/ living with their families and just doing nothing whatsoever. Maybe  they're just the archetypal young(ish) people during an economic downturn. Like his only real ambition is to go live somewhere quiet with the woman he's in love with, but this is regarded as an absurd notion by his peer group. It's that thing of not being able to achieve the things you're brought up to expect for yourself.

I've read Hangover Square - and I'll read it again very soon - but I'm currently reading Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham - and there are very similar themes and episodes there - although (I think - I haven't finished it) there is an optimistic outcome in my book.

My first impression was of this belonging with writers I associate with the absent poster, Queneau: Greene (Brighton Rock), Beckett (Murphy), B.S. Johnson and there was praise from Keith Waterhouse on the cover. I think he once recommended this book on here too.

The 'dead mood', 'click', silent movie stuff reminded me of two other novels about isolated men from around the same period, Murphy again and Edward Upward's Journey to the Border, both of them late 30s novels by writers based in London at the time. Dispassionate, cartoonish metaphors describing strange mental experiences, frustrastions in handling daily life mitigated by personal comical systems, resentment of work despite money being hard to come by, and conflicted relationships with one woman. Even playing around with the sound of the love interest's name or other increasingly superficial words crops up in these. It must have been a broadly similar looking world for young writers in the city before the war.

Something for Stewart Lee's Plagiarists' Corner:

Quote from: Patrick Hamilton, Hangover SquareHe scanned the headlines gloomily. 'TRAINS CRASH IN SNOW-STORM: 85 DEAD, 300 INJURED.' He experienced a momentary feeling that he was about to be shocked, and then saw that the news came from Budapest, which meant that he did not have to be shocked. Train disasters, like Netta, had their own tragic haloes which grew faint and dissipated at a great enough distance.

Quote from: Stewart Lee "Stand Up Comedian"
I went into a little Spanish bar. On television there was all this film of buildings on fire and buildings falling down and people running around screaming. And I said to the barman, "where's that?" In Spanish "Donde esta?" And he said "Nueva York"....and I thought, "Oh it's in Colombia or somewhere, it doesn't matter" then I watched for a bit longer Glasgow and I realised that it was in New York, where English speaking people live...and therefore a terrible newsworthy tragedy was occurring.

One other thing. 'The lights were going nicely with them to - shining out with brilliant friendliness like bottles in a chemist's shop'. This attractive picture is marred by what looks like a spelling mistake in my edition (p.33 Penguin Modern Classics). Unless it could mean 'to... rattle past the Bank'. I'll be asking Oxfam for my money back.

Howj Begg

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on December 13, 2017, 03:55:57 PM
My first impression was of this belonging with writers I associate with the absent poster, Queneau: Greene (Brighton Rock), Beckett (Murphy), B.S. Johnson and there was praise from Keith Waterhouse on the cover. I think he once recommended this book on here too.

The 'dead mood', 'click', silent movie stuff reminded me of two other novels about isolated men from around the same period, Murphy again and Edward Upward's Journey to the Border, both of them late 30s novels by writers based in London at the time. Dispassionate, cartoonish metaphors describing strange mental experiences, frustrastions in handling daily life mitigated by personal comical systems, resentment of work despite money being hard to come by, and conflicted relationships with one woman. Even playing around with the sound of the love interest's name or other increasingly superficial words crops up in these. It must have been a broadly similar looking world for young writers in the city before the war.

Something for Stewart Lee's Plagiarists' Corner:

One other thing. 'The lights were going nicely with them to - shining out with brilliant friendliness like bottles in a chemist's shop'. This attractive picture is marred by what looks like a spelling mistake in my edition (p.33 Penguin Modern Classics). Unless it could mean 'to... rattle past the Bank'. I'll be asking Oxfam for my money back.

I noticed that spelling mistake, and have the same edition (as ebook), so it's been type-set into all Penguin copies...

Into Part 2 now, and it's a very enjoyable, redolent read. The style, if not the content, conjures up Ealing/Archers films... actually Odd Man Out by Carol Reed is one that springs to mind, with its great extended pub scene. So the feel of the times is superbly captured. The storytelling is close to masterful. The prose is, er, serviceable, mostly, though there's the occasional flash of inspiration, especially in heightened and elaborated descriptions of Bone's state, or his relationships with Netta. And that so far constitutes the most memorable aspect of the book, the pin-sharp characterisation of unrequited love, of being Netta's stooge. The phrase "intoxicating insinuations", appearing in the section on the early meetings with Netta, is one of the high points so far. Almost made me feel ill with its distressing accuracy. It's a moment when the story escapes the 'cartoonishness' (good word Smer) and approaches some kind of, gulp, profundity, some kind of giddy artfulness that combined bitter emotion with the drab, but slightly cartoonish realism. I suspect there will be more of this, and I can't wait.

Janie Jones

Quote from: Howj Begg on December 13, 2017, 09:45:27 PM
...

Into Part 2 now, and it's a very enjoyable, redolent read. The style, if not the content, conjures up Ealing/Archers films... actually Odd Man Out by Carol Reed is one that springs to mind, with its great extended pub scene. So the feel of the times is superbly captured.

Yes and the place. It's a London Novel like 'London Belongs to Me' by Norman Collins, set about the same time, and which heavily influenced St Etienne. Earls Court isn't suburbia any more but several bloggers have identified most of the pubs Hamilton refers to (beware mild spoilers if anyone wants to look further into this) and I look forward to seeking out a couple next time I'm in the area.

I knew nothing about Hamilton's life and death before this book club choice. He was an alcoholic who died age 58. It's good that much of his work was critically acclaimed and commercially successful during his lifetime although Wiki says he suffered 'melancholia' in his later years. I'm not surprised - he died in Sheringham, Norfolk which must've been a far cry from the dirty glamour and buzz of the London he wrote about.

I've just finished Part 6, I think, the night in the hotel in Brighton. On balance, I'm enjoying it. It's very competently written, Hamilton clearly a guy who lived life and thought about it.

My big problem with it - and this is as much me as the book - is that I can't put up with too much written from weak characters' perspectives. I seem to have a very limited supply of empathy before I get bored and think it's just not realistic anymore. Or maybe the book is still too old and mentalities too far removed from ours. I guess it was before Tinder so they thought about relationships differently, but just sack her off man. It's frustrating. I'm very much hoping George kills Netta. What can we learn from reading about failures? People who have such little self control? It's just alien to me.

selectivememory

Edit: I have finished and had posted some notes, but it would probably be better to post them on schedule with everyone else, as I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone. Anyway, I liked the book

Large Noise

Quote from: Poisson Du Jour on December 17, 2017, 09:44:13 PM
My big problem with it - and this is as much me as the book - is that I can't put up with too much written from weak characters' perspectives. I seem to have a very limited supply of empathy before I get bored and think it's just not realistic anymore. Or maybe the book is still too old and mentalities too far removed from ours. I guess it was before Tinder so they thought about relationships differently, but just sack her off man. It's frustrating. I'm very much hoping George kills Netta. What can we learn from reading about failures? People who have such little self control? It's just alien to me.
I'm at a similar point in the book to you.

I know what you mean, it gets a bit difficult to empathise with George when Netta's really taking the piss and he's just putting up with it. When I was reading Part 1 I assumed that the nasty sides of Netta and Peter, and their mistreatment of him, would be an undercurrent in their friendship rather than the entirety of it. I mean, Netta doesn't lead him on or leave any dubiety as to how she views him. I've been of both sides of unrequited love with friends and lemme tell ya; dubiety's everything. These relationships don't survive the kind of knock-backs Netta keeps giving George.

But maybe why that's why Hamilton's given him these dark moods. He's either planning to elope with her or he's planning to murder her, and nothing in between. A bit like how she's got absolutely no ambition beyond her demonstrably unrealistic dream of being in the movies, which baffles George.

selectivememory

#18
Actually, I will post all this now, because otherwise I'll just forget later. Spoilers in white text.

I have mixed feelings about the book, although on the whole I thought it was pretty good. I found it very readable, but I guess I didn't really find the prose very distinctive, or ever really much more than serviceable, as Howj Begg put it. On the other hand, it was well-written in the sense that it told the story impeccably well, and ultimately it was very effective in doing what it set out to do. But still, that doesn't mean that I didn't find Bone an intensely frustrating protagonist every time he talked himself into being duped by Netta yet again (yeah, I mean, I feel something a bit like Poisson Du Jour above does; like, how many times is he going to keep doing this to himself? The bit in Part Nine where he completely loses his resolve at the slightest manipulation from Netta had me cringing with embarrassment for him - it also doesn't help that Netta is so vile and that George knows that she is).

I liked the chapters where we saw Bone from an outsider's perspective. I think sometimes we were a little too close to him to see what kind of appeal he might have had to anyone else. So it was nice when Hamilton pulled back and let us see him through the eyes of Johnnie or the young guy who had just come to London, and see that he did have a kind of simple charm to him.

I wasn't sure if he was going to go through with it, but kudos to Hamilton because that was a stunningly bleak final few chapters, after what had been a very uplifting few when he met up with Johnnie and his friends in Brighton. At first I didn't like where it was going, because I really liked the bits when Johnnie introduced him to the theatre people and how he came to what should have been a definitive realisation about Netta, but in the end I think it made sense for the novel to end in that way. The Newspaper headline it ended with made me snort as well.

I thought the backdrop of the impending war was very effective in adding to the gloomy atmosphere of the book, particularly in the final few chapters; I did wonder if he was going to get away with it just because everyone else was so distracted with the declaration of war. It did feel to me from quite early on that the war was going to be the thing that eventually broke the miserable, aimless cycle of these characters' lives, because it didn't seem like they were able to make positive changes for themselves (apart from Bone right before he goes into his final "dark mood").

As an aside, these people were drinking a staggering amount of booze. I know they're alcoholics, but Jesus Christ. Pretty much going toe-to-toe with the characters of The Sun Also Rises, every other sentence of which seemed to be "and then they had a few more beers and some gin and some whiskeys".

Janie Jones

Quote from: Poisson Du Jour on December 17, 2017, 09:44:13 PM
...maybe the book is still too old and mentalities too far removed from ours. I guess it was before Tinder so they thought about relationships differently, but just sack her off man. It's frustrating. I'm very much hoping George kills Netta. What can we learn from reading about failures? People who have such little self control? It's just alien to me.
I think being hopelessly in unrequited love with someone who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire is something many people can identify with, regardless of age and gender and access to Tinder. I think that the reader's urge to grab George by the lapels of his jacket and say, 'Mate. Fucksakes. Have some dignity' is what Hamilton is aiming for and it makes us look at ourselves. You're lucky to have the self control to have never made a dick of yourself like George is doing (up to the point I've read, anyway). Not many people can say that they've never been such an eejit and that's why the Netta stuff feels relevant to so many readers.

I can't say I blame people for surging ahead with this, it's a book whose charms are so much rooted in its ability to conjure an atmosphere that pausing for a couple of days, like I have, kills it off a bit.

My feelings about it are a bit mixed based on Parts 1-3. I mostly keep wondering why this book that evokes very well a particular time and place, and deals with an unusual and hard to name mental illness, with being part of a bad crowd, and with loving someone that doesn't love you back needs to have bolted onto it a shlocky story about a bog-standard "mad" character planning to kill a woman he knows.  Maybe I'd feel differently if the decision to kill Netta had crept up on him a bit more, but it just feels jarring to me, as if Hamilton had written the other material first and then didn't have the confidence to put it out without a straightforward thriller aspect in there. I like the other stuff about Bone's mental illness, I just don't see how his plan to kill Netta and move to Maidenhead really fits with it.

An impression brought into relief by coming to this book after reading Middlemarch was the way that these people resemble us more than the characters in a 19th Century novel because their lives are media-saturated. It was striking that the first analogy Bone reached for to describe his illness was cinematic, and the media theme kept been returned to through Netta's acting career and the bursts of uncomprehended movie listings and newspaper headlines. The poem-like lines at the end of Part 4 chapter 1 about Hitler, the IRA and the West Indian (cricket?) team seems less about real events in the world and more about the odd jumble of names and data newspapers and newsreels fill the characters heads with. Bone's sense of "coming to", forced to guess where he's been and what he's done resemble cinematic jump-cuts.  His sense of distance from others is also suggestive of the detached way that cinema allows us to view people and objects. I must say a lot of this stuff was quite familiar to me, I have gone through phases of being a bit disassociated!

Did any have a clear idea what exactly might be wrong with Bone? Some sort of general sense of disassociation made worse by alcohol induced lapses in memory? The scenes from Bone's schooldays reminded me of the descriptions of children suffering from petit mal epileptic seizures in Paul Virilio's strange essay-book The Aesthetics of Disappearance,and I wondered if Bone was experiencing some sort of waking seizure. That book also links lapses in conciousness with cinematic edits, and links both of those to the ability to violently manipulate the world that comes with being able to re-imagine it.

Janie Jones

^Oh that's spot on. The laboured ladykiller theme and the contrast with Middlemarch.

I was going to ask about the schizophrenic business, as it clearly isn't schizophrenia; what's described is far more like petite mal.

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on December 18, 2017, 12:33:04 AM
The poem-like lines at the end of Part 4 chapter 1 about Hitler, the IRA....
Yes that sent me to Google, I did not know about the IRA cloakroom bombing campaign which caused a fatality (up till then they were mainly targeting property not people) just before Hamilton started writing the book.

DukeDeMondo

#22
I dunno that I have much to add yet, most of the stuff in the thoughts I have thought has already been touched upon.

I will say I have had no trouble identifying with Old Bone. No trouble at all.

"Without consulting his will, his whole being had of itself decided to engage itself, to employ and strain all its faculties, in loving her, and now there was no other woman, no other colouring or texture, no other blend of heavenly kindness and cruelty on any other woman's mouth or eyes that would do."

Flailing around in the throes of that kind of hopeless and pitiful adoration. "He was hers for ever and ever." Typical alcoholic. The man only makes sense to himself in light of his most destructive and harmful obsessions. The more destructive and harmful the better. The more likely to leave him battered and in bits by the end. Netta is worse for his head than the drink, I would say, for the drink, though he takes a lot of it, and though his conscience is biting a bit, he at least seems to be fit to half handle. 

Most every character has some sorry thing about them that I've found it very easy to relate to. The thing that pierced me most, though, and that made me wince hardest, and that had me holding the book at odd angles for fear of making any eye contact whatsoever, is this say about, again, our Netta:

"But after that she was a flop. Why? [...] Principally because she was spoiled and lazy, and drank too much – because she had expected success without having to work for it, and now drank and was lazy in a sort of furious annoyance at the fact that success was not to be had that way – a vicious circle of arrogance, and laziness and drink."

Christ. The face on me when I read that.

I was struck also by the list of films Bone looks over as he's waiting for his scrans in the Corner House. Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You. Capra is the only director mentioned – Disney is named but he's talking about the studio – and I wondered why Frank Capra? Was "Capraesque" a thing yet by this point? For if it was, it makes sense that his name would jump out at Bone, for that's most certainly the kind of narrative he fancies himself a part of. The downtrodden Rising Above. But this was a year or so before Mr Smith Goes To Washington, for example. Anyway I asked a one-time colleague of mine, how much or what, if anything, would the name "Frank Capra" mean to the average British cinemagoer (and I'm aware "average cinemagoer" is much of a nonsense, but it was early, and I couldn't think of another way of putting it) in 1938/1939? Was "Capraesque" a thing yet, even if it hadn't been so named? His name is pretty prominently displayed on the poster for You Can't Take It With You, and he had won Best Director twice by this point, but to your Joe McGreer and your Wee Louise Michaels at the pictures of a Saturday night, did it mean that much at all? Was "Frank Capra" enough of a brand by then? He said he wasn't sure, but that he thought it more likely that audiences would be aware of the "cycle," that the films were produced by the same studio and might feature the same stars, than they would be familiar with the notion of the "Capraesque," or even of Frank Capra as a filmmaker. So I thought perhaps "Frank Capra" meant more to Patrick Hamilton in 1940 or 1941 that it would have meant to Bone in 1938/1939. But I don't know, I didn't come to any conclusion. Pointless, really, bringing it up, but it was something that intrigued me.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Large Noise on December 17, 2017, 11:05:44 PM
These relationships don't survive the kind of knock-backs Netta keeps giving George.

I've got one friend that proves they do - at least across periods short enough to cover the implied and explicitly stated narrative of Hangover Square.  Over-and-over, unfortunately!

Large Noise

Some immediate thoughts after finishing the book. Sorry to jump ahead, but I know I won't bother posting anything if I leave it a week and it's nolonger fresh in my mind.

Spoilers, lads, so I'll keep it white:


I thought his return to Brighton and his interaction with Johnnie and Eddie was really quite poignant. George was much more empathetic than he had been in the middle section, which made me think that the book could've benefited from being shorter. Fair enough, the murders act as the payoff for the incredibly awful way in which George is treated on his first trip to Brighton. But still, I think Hamilton could've built towards that without George becoming quite so snivelling beforehand.

I liked the way that Hamilton draws a parallel between George's pursuit of Netta and Netta's pursuit of Eddie. Eddie despises her in the way that she despises George. And the way George feels elated after the Johnnie, Eddie and the gang treat him properly in Brighton demonstrates how he must have felt when he first inveigled himself into Netta's circle. When George starts telling himself that those guys are genuinely kind and their camaraderie represents a victory for him, I'm not sure how the reader is meant to feel. It sharply contrasts with his earlier conviction that the world is divided in to winners and losers and he's on one side while the glitterati are on the other. I got this foreboding sense that George was about to start emotionally relying on people who're only being pleasant and putting up with him, all over again. But when he kills Netta, Peter and himself, that final scene in Brighton leaves you with the sense that he still had a chance to be happy; that his mind had been poisoned by bad people and there was nothing inevitable or essential to George that had to lead to disaster.

Finally, I thought the Dead Mood thing came together at the end too. It put me in mind of Lost Highway, which really becomes a movie with all the associated archetypal characters once the protagonist enters his fantasy world. You're struck that a lot of what George does towards the end is almost a parody of narrative fiction. In his Dead Moods George becomes this guy who's driven by a plot that's seemingly been handed down from on high, or his subconscious, or (since we're talking about a novel in which an omniscient narrator can inhabit his mind) they're the same thing.  The way he attempts to walk from Brighton to London and from London to Maidenhead seemed like Hamilton pointing out that he can make these fuckers go wherever he wants and it doesn't have to make any sense, because it's all really just plot-driven anyway. Netta wanted to be an actress in a movie, and because she was killed by Dead Mood George, she kind of was in the end.

Howj Begg

#25
So I've finished it. I liked it a lot, and am very grateful to have had the opportunity. Everything below is

SPOILERS

- A lesser writer would have made Netta slightly sympathetic, provided enough ambiguity to allow us to wonder whether she could like George in the "oh he's so adorably silly isn't he?" expressions  that George sometimes gets fooled by... but no, her real attitude towards him and her coldness is fixed by the halfway point, and we are never meaningfully teased with any strand of decency in her again (I didn't buy her sweetness to George when he looked after her in her illness, but ultimately neither did George. He was realising her deception even as he was deliriously planning a stay in Maidenhead with her). This non-ambiguity makes for a painful black comedy, even a "farce", that never lets up.

- Having said that, and not to make an explicit connection with Cat Person (which George is, of course, ha), but this is certainly an essentially misogynist book, though not an an extremely uncomfortable level, or whatever. Netta is essneially defined only in her relations to himself and the other men. The narrator does tell us that she is a hateful person without a soul, and we are supposed to accept that; but she is the second character in the book, and we never see things from her eyes. We know nothing of what she thinks or feels or has experienced in her life. Judging her, in the way that George, Johnnie and Eddie ultimately judge her - "a bitch" is certainly easy and satisfying. She's been a bitch to George, we are sure of that, but why exactly - that's left mysterious to us. As the book is told by omniscient narrator, and His voice is very prominent, particuarly when George is coping with his everyday existence (in the dead moods we are telescoped into George's brain) one chapter telling us Netta's thoughts and fears would have been welcome. Mention of Johnnie and Eddie brings me to them

- My feeling is that Eddie, Johhnie, maybe also Albert Drexel and Cornford Hobbs are all homosexual, and are trying to heavily hint to Johnnie that women are not worth his time in the last section. It may be that they, particularly Hobbs,  are trying to get him drunk and seduce him that night. I think they like him, but they wish to exploit him too, and the comparison between them and his normal drinking buddies is instructive. Both are riotous, both broadly accepting of him, both make fun at his expense. These new friends make feel more benign now, but what would they be like towards him subsequently?

- The framing by Samson Agonistes, with Netta as Delilah and our man Bone as Samosn, is pretty cute. Like Samson George's virility is at stake for him, and is a source of strength when it is confirmed by Netta's tolerance or the kindness of a friend or stranger. It's why going to 'Maidenhead' (obvious linguistic symbol) is so important for him, irrespective of its role in his past. He wants the feeling of being a man that being with the attractive women he is obsessed with gives him, and which he sees in the eyes of society when people look at them together. Killing her and going to Maidenhead is a nice juicy metaphor. I think George doesn't know what order to do things in, he just knows in his things that things have to be done. He drinks in order to avoid getting drunk, he buys a golf club because he is good at gold but in order to kill his friends, he spends money in order to save his inheritance, he goes to places eg Brighton and London when he knows that's the worst course of action, and often only remembers to pack after. Whatever his neurological condition is, I feel that that's not so important... George is mentally disordered, in that all of the symbols and desires and image sin his head get continually mixed up, because he is so unhappy that he cannot fulfil them in the way normal people do. Or maybe his illness is more important.

-So is this a cautionary book? Alcoholism is bad enough, but alcoholism with depression - and 'bitch' women -  and unexplained neurological problems worse still? I think it might be fulfilling that function, I don't know enough about Hamilton to know what he's trying to say.

- I loved the phrase 'the drunk' as in the 'downstairs the drunk was proceeding'.


Quote from: Poisson Du Jour on December 17, 2017, 09:44:13 PM
What can we learn from reading about failures? People who have such little self control? It's just alien to me.

Heh. You're asking this on CAB you know :D. Still, I do think the book is very interestign from that pov. It does explore that tussle of free will and automatic behaviour that George goes through, and which he seems to win at several points, before it's made clear that he's sinking back into habit and disillusion once again. But he does seem to make some progress, and ultimately it's his neurological condition which overrides him, as is appropriate for a good black comedy. But his dead moods, where his dream logic makes sense, is also a metaphor for the automatic behaviour and unconscious motivations of alcohol addiction.


ASFTSN

Quote from: Howj Begg on December 23, 2017, 03:52:28 AM

SPOILERS

- My feeling is that Eddie, Johhnie, maybe also Albert Drexel and Cornford Hobbs are all homosexual, and are trying to heavily hint to Johnnie that women are not worth his time in the last section. It may be that they, particularly Hobbs,  are trying to get him drunk and seduce him that night. I think they like him, but they wish to exploit him too, and the comparison between them and his normal drinking buddies is instructive. Both are riotous, both broadly accepting of him, both make fun at his expense. These new friends make feel more benign now, but what would they be like towards him subsequently?

Never occurred to me, that, very interesting interpretation.  I just assumed the 'throw her out of the window' advice about women was a different, more amiable stripe of heterosexual macho bullishness to a bloke in a bad spot. 

I'm guessing you meant 'hint to George' though, right?

Howj Begg

Quote from: ASFTSN on December 23, 2017, 01:23:01 PM
Never occurred to me, that, very interesting interpretation.  I just assumed the 'throw her out of the window' advice about women was a different, more amiable stripe of heterosexual macho bullishness to a bloke in a bad spot. 

I'm guessing you meant 'hint to George' though, right?

Yes, to George... thanks for picking that up!

Howj Begg

Want to apologise for the numerous spelling mistakes in my long post. I was pissed

Janie Jones

I've finished this now, it was brilliant
SPOILERS

The end made me cry and then laugh. I've learnt so much from this book and from everyone's forgoing comments, thank you. I look forward to more when everyone has finished.

The loneliness and craving for intimacy in the relationship of 'the big drinking man' with the little hotel cat, to whom he would 'gently murmur in the darkness' stood out for me. It wasn't even his cat, it belonged to other people. It didn't care if he lived or died (a la Netta) so fussing about it in his last moments was pointless. That made me ache for him. The little boy missing his sister, shambling around in his big man's body, unable to see that he does have charm, that other people like him for himself. He can't see it because as other people have said, he's invested -badly - in a toxic crowd of wankers.

My daughter refers to FOMO, Fear of Missing Out that motivates you to stay for the last drink when you know you should go home or to go clubbing on an evening when you don't really have the time or the money to go out. That hasn't changed from Bone's London to hers.

I known it's a trivial point but I've never read a book with so many typos; mine is a 2016 edition.