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Jan. 16th, 2018 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI just finished Natasha Pulley's new book, The Bedlam Stacks; it's gorgeous and enthralling and I partially loved it and I am also afraid there might be something rotten at the heart of it and I need someone smarter than me to tell me about it.
I mean, I know there's something rotten at the heart of it, the book knows that: our protagonist Merrick Tremayne is a gardener-spy in the employ of the East India Company, destabilizing economies round the world for fun and profit. Shortly after the book begins, Tremayne and his old Navy friend Clement Markham are sent to steal cinchona trees from Peru in order to get around the closely-guarded monopoly on quinine, the only extant cure for malaria. The mission is complicated by a.) the fact that, due to a relatively recent injury, Tremayne has a very bad leg and walks with great difficulty and b.) Tremayne's secret orders: "we know getting a viable cinchona cutting is a very long shot and we very badly need the quinine, so if it turns out you can't manage Plan A, move on to Plan B and get your Sympathetic Family Man friend Markham dramatically killed to give us the excuse to invade Peru in retaliation."
That's not the first thing that happens in the book. The first thing is that a tree from Peru explodes on Tremayne's house, and a statue his father brought back starts to move around the garden. Tremayne's family connection to the Peruvian village of New Bethlehem -- Bedlam -- which Tremayne's father and grandfather both respectively visited long ago, and from which they brought back wonders, becomes the official excuse for Tremayne and Markham's visit.
Tremayne's guide to Bedlam is Raphael, the book's other central figure, an indigenous Peruvian priest with a perfect grasp of English and Spanish who is understandably not excited about to the fact that he is now responsible for two Englishmen on a stupid suicide mission who are constantly peppering him with anthropological questions to boot. Tremayne gets some comfort, during the journey to Bedlam, out of the knowledge that he's at least somewhat less irritating to Raphael than Markham is. It's possible that Raphael's orders are to protect Tremayne and Markham; it's equally possible that his job is to kill them to protect the quinine monopoly. But once they reach the intensely mythic claustrophobia of Bedlam, eventually the global geopolitics cease to matter (to Tremayne) except insofar as they threaten Raphael and Bedlam (which they do).
The book knows about all the evils that accompany British imperialism, much as Tremayne knows he's not a particularly good person, but it seems there's not much to be done about it in either case; Pulley's story is about Tremayne and Raphael and Bedlam, and only glancingly about Tremayne and his own conscience. The prose is dense with numinous melancholy, but, you know, Peru is a real place, and I don't know how much beautiful, witty prose and several degrees of dry self-awareness can pull you out of the too-common trap of turning a foreign country into a fairyland. I'm just going to quote a passage of conversation here between Tremayne and Raphael, because I think it sums up the part of my feelings about this book that are conflicted:
So Raphael, throughout the book, makes several frustrated and disparaging comments about his own people. Finally, Tremayne: "Why do you hate Indians? You know white people are much worse, don't you? It isn't as though there's some kind of international bar you're not reaching out here. We're terrible at everything. Lasting much past forty-five. Learning more than one language. It's a miracle, actually; sickly prematurely ageing worryingly inbred horsey idiots have managed to convince everyone else their way is best by no other means than firmness of manner and the tactical distribution of flags. I can't believe no one's called our bluff yet."
To which, Raphael: "I don't like bad translation. I don't like idiots who go around telling white men that the mountain's alive and it thinks things, and that villages are watched over by special people who turn to stone."
Tremayne: "But that's what it is."
Raphael: "No it isn't. That's terrible. That's not how you'd say it in Spain or England, is it? You'd say, there is a particular hereditary illness in the Andean highlands that causes petrification and eventually renders the sufferers inert in a kind of permanent catalepsy and apparently part of the surrounding rock, which has led to a cultural tendency to be very careful of stone, and a religion that reveres it. That's exactly the same thing, in a language that you actually speak rather than in Quechua but using Spanish words. Bloody Quespañol. Speak one or the other, or don't complain when someone smacks you over the head with a Bible and calls you a moron."
And then they both laugh and continue with the plot, and I don't -- it's clever about language and translation, the whole book is clever about language and translation, but I'm not sure Natasha Pulley gets to put that in the mouth of an indigenous character and call it a day, especially since none of the other Quechua-speaking characters have the narrative status to argue with him. In the same way, it nags at me from a Doyelistic standpoint that Raphael speaks perfect vernacular British English -- and then Pulley consistently translates the Spanish that semi-fluent-in-Spanish Tremayne hears throughout his adventure into casual vernacular British English as well, because I think one of her theses is that if we all spoke the same language then perhaps we'd all see each other as people, and she does want you to see all the people in her book as people. Except it turns out the language you have to be heard in, for that to work, is perfect vernacular British English. I don't think I'm getting at this well, and maybe indeed I'm getting it all wrong, but I'd very much like to see someone else try and get at it better.
I mean, I know there's something rotten at the heart of it, the book knows that: our protagonist Merrick Tremayne is a gardener-spy in the employ of the East India Company, destabilizing economies round the world for fun and profit. Shortly after the book begins, Tremayne and his old Navy friend Clement Markham are sent to steal cinchona trees from Peru in order to get around the closely-guarded monopoly on quinine, the only extant cure for malaria. The mission is complicated by a.) the fact that, due to a relatively recent injury, Tremayne has a very bad leg and walks with great difficulty and b.) Tremayne's secret orders: "we know getting a viable cinchona cutting is a very long shot and we very badly need the quinine, so if it turns out you can't manage Plan A, move on to Plan B and get your Sympathetic Family Man friend Markham dramatically killed to give us the excuse to invade Peru in retaliation."
That's not the first thing that happens in the book. The first thing is that a tree from Peru explodes on Tremayne's house, and a statue his father brought back starts to move around the garden. Tremayne's family connection to the Peruvian village of New Bethlehem -- Bedlam -- which Tremayne's father and grandfather both respectively visited long ago, and from which they brought back wonders, becomes the official excuse for Tremayne and Markham's visit.
Tremayne's guide to Bedlam is Raphael, the book's other central figure, an indigenous Peruvian priest with a perfect grasp of English and Spanish who is understandably not excited about to the fact that he is now responsible for two Englishmen on a stupid suicide mission who are constantly peppering him with anthropological questions to boot. Tremayne gets some comfort, during the journey to Bedlam, out of the knowledge that he's at least somewhat less irritating to Raphael than Markham is. It's possible that Raphael's orders are to protect Tremayne and Markham; it's equally possible that his job is to kill them to protect the quinine monopoly. But once they reach the intensely mythic claustrophobia of Bedlam, eventually the global geopolitics cease to matter (to Tremayne) except insofar as they threaten Raphael and Bedlam (which they do).
The book knows about all the evils that accompany British imperialism, much as Tremayne knows he's not a particularly good person, but it seems there's not much to be done about it in either case; Pulley's story is about Tremayne and Raphael and Bedlam, and only glancingly about Tremayne and his own conscience. The prose is dense with numinous melancholy, but, you know, Peru is a real place, and I don't know how much beautiful, witty prose and several degrees of dry self-awareness can pull you out of the too-common trap of turning a foreign country into a fairyland. I'm just going to quote a passage of conversation here between Tremayne and Raphael, because I think it sums up the part of my feelings about this book that are conflicted:
So Raphael, throughout the book, makes several frustrated and disparaging comments about his own people. Finally, Tremayne: "Why do you hate Indians? You know white people are much worse, don't you? It isn't as though there's some kind of international bar you're not reaching out here. We're terrible at everything. Lasting much past forty-five. Learning more than one language. It's a miracle, actually; sickly prematurely ageing worryingly inbred horsey idiots have managed to convince everyone else their way is best by no other means than firmness of manner and the tactical distribution of flags. I can't believe no one's called our bluff yet."
To which, Raphael: "I don't like bad translation. I don't like idiots who go around telling white men that the mountain's alive and it thinks things, and that villages are watched over by special people who turn to stone."
Tremayne: "But that's what it is."
Raphael: "No it isn't. That's terrible. That's not how you'd say it in Spain or England, is it? You'd say, there is a particular hereditary illness in the Andean highlands that causes petrification and eventually renders the sufferers inert in a kind of permanent catalepsy and apparently part of the surrounding rock, which has led to a cultural tendency to be very careful of stone, and a religion that reveres it. That's exactly the same thing, in a language that you actually speak rather than in Quechua but using Spanish words. Bloody Quespañol. Speak one or the other, or don't complain when someone smacks you over the head with a Bible and calls you a moron."
And then they both laugh and continue with the plot, and I don't -- it's clever about language and translation, the whole book is clever about language and translation, but I'm not sure Natasha Pulley gets to put that in the mouth of an indigenous character and call it a day, especially since none of the other Quechua-speaking characters have the narrative status to argue with him. In the same way, it nags at me from a Doyelistic standpoint that Raphael speaks perfect vernacular British English -- and then Pulley consistently translates the Spanish that semi-fluent-in-Spanish Tremayne hears throughout his adventure into casual vernacular British English as well, because I think one of her theses is that if we all spoke the same language then perhaps we'd all see each other as people, and she does want you to see all the people in her book as people. Except it turns out the language you have to be heard in, for that to work, is perfect vernacular British English. I don't think I'm getting at this well, and maybe indeed I'm getting it all wrong, but I'd very much like to see someone else try and get at it better.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 07:06 am (UTC)I don't know that it would make much of a difference to the issues you describe if it weren't, but The Bedlam Stacks is definitely set in our history, our Peru? I am under the impression her previous novel was stealth fantasy/alternate history.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 08:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 09:27 am (UTC)That does seem unfair, I agree.
I think one of her theses is that if we all spoke the same language then perhaps we'd all see each other as people
Ah. It is her first day on the internet, then.
Also I'm fascinated and a little horrified at the thought that she might have thought her way through the concept of linguistic determinism/influence and come to the conclusion not that we should all learn more languages so as to explore more viewpoints, but instead should all speak the same language so we can all think the same.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 01:46 pm (UTC)What.
*reads further*
Ah, okay. Some magical realism going on. I wasn't expecting that from the start of the review. Some of the malaria/cinchona plot sounds familiar - was this based on real events?
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 02:50 pm (UTC)I don't remember feeling that we were meant to take Raphael's words as unproblematic -- he is shown at other times to be deliberately distancing himself from and condescending to other indigenous characters, so I think I read this conversation and similar ones as partly being in line with Pulley's views about language and translation and view points, but partly just being one example of several where Raphael tries to rationalise his feelings rather than acknowledging their messiness? I feel like maybe another theme I took away was how he has (in several different ways) been placed in between cultures, and how his anger at the unfairness of his position spills over in all directions -- which maybe influenced how I read that conversation?
Not to say that I think you're wrong -- partly, I don't remember it well enough, and partly it may well be that when I read it again with your points in mind I'll be embarrassed not to have seen it that way to start with.
I think one of her theses is that if we all spoke the same language then perhaps we'd all see each other as people
Really? Huh. I don't remember feeling that way at all (though, again, caveat caveat caveat, and I do anticipate that when I reread this in a few months I will be coming back to this post with new opinions...) I felt like it was more about how not sharing a language and cultural context for that language allows us extra gaps for where empathy/respect/etc can be lost. But she gives so many examples of people who understand each other perfectly but don't see each other at all that I don't think she was arguing shared language is a solution, just that it's important not to see the gaps as truth.
Hmmm. Really interesting post. I will ponder more.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 05:32 pm (UTC)Thanks!
(It would not solve the language/translation/representation questions for me, but if it were explicitly not our history, I would feel less weird about real countries behaving like fairy stories, especially if England is not just itself, either.)
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 06:21 pm (UTC)So, yes, we have Markham, who is posh and white and not actually very good at anything, who really did make a trip to real Peru to steal cinchona but didn't actually die; all the weird magic we see in The Bedlam Stacks in Cornwall turns out... to be from Peru; I felt like TWoFS was careful and loving and probably-sound, but I read TBS with an increasing sense that it was engaging and charming and really, really racist.
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Date: 2018-01-17 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 07:27 pm (UTC)England not having a magic of its own does make a difference to how I read these variations from history, yes.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-17 08:46 pm (UTC)warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-17 11:58 pm (UTC)I'm not sure Natasha Pulley gets to put that in the mouth of an indigenous character and call it a day, especially since none of the other Quechua-speaking characters have the narrative status to argue with him.
I agree, I don't think Pulley gets to write about an indigenous person's issues about his culture and heritage in a way that valorises Western culture. Like, I'm sorry, if I heard a PoC say that about their culture I'd do an internal eye-roll, like well you've been thoroughly brainwashed by the Western hegemony, well done. A white person trying to represent this conflict? Nah. And I don't think she did it successfully anyway. Raphael just sounded like an upper-class British person plonked down in Peru, which made no sense for somebody of his background. (I don't think she did this because of any thesis re seeing each other as people if we all talk the same way; I suspect she did it because she can really only write people who sound like middle/upper-class British people. I mean, she does that very well!)
And I recognise that just because the narrative is focused on a bad person* and his perspective, and you have to care about him and root for him for the book to work, doesn't mean the book is necessarily validating the character's bad behaviour. But in a world that prioritises the white Western imperialist viewpoint and gives enormous time and validation to the feelings of imperialists ... I read enough of that poisonous crap in my childhood, I don't need more of it now.
Also FINALLY I don't know if this bugged you but what she did with Minna BUGGED ME SO MUCH. Why introduce an interesting female character only to WRENCH HER AWAY with a really transparent excuse like two chapters in?? Just don't include women in your books if you're gonna do me like that, Pulley!
*Mori and Tremayne aren't only bad people -- they have good in them too -- but they both do very bad things and I feel pretty comfortable calling them bad people, especially Tremayne.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:31 am (UTC)Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-18 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 05:16 am (UTC)I think for me the trouble with Raphael's distance from and disdain for his own culture, even if you take it to be read as both problematic and unfair, is that we don't really have any counterpoint to it -- the only two other indigenous characters who are really characters in any sense at all are Inti and Anka, and Inti is a kindly parishioner and Anka is an irrational force of murder. Nobody has the chance to express frustration or anger with Raphael for the way he dismisses them, there's no counter-balance to the casual imperialism of the European characters and Raphael's internal conflicts.
And without that counter-balance, I don't trust myself to be clever enough to know when the author is inviting me to take a critical step back from the face value of what her characters are telling me about themselves and the way they think the world works. And the thing is there are chances built in for it -- the markayuq talk! it's clearly important that they talk, that the strings are complex writing and storytelling! and I definitely think you're right that it's important to the book that Raphael is caught between the older culture they represent and the newer Hispanicized culture - but I don't think they ever say enough to stand as an actual challenge. Even Anka talks at the end, but she doesn't get anything like Raphael's eloquence in her own defense. And I don't think you need to be a mad mercury-poisoned markayuq not to want a murderous East India Company gardener-spy wandering around your extremely secret and well-guarded cultural sacred space, either.
(...apologies for the lengthy comment, I CONTINUE TO HAVE A LOT OF MUDDLED THOUGHTS and appreciate you talking through them with me!)
Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-18 05:36 am (UTC)All through the book I kept wanting to talk myself into the best interpretation of things, because the writing is so nice and often so clever and I'm like, well, surely this has got to be more complicated than it seems to be and I'm just missing the deeper and more thoughtful implications? But the more I talk through the more I unfortunately don't think that's the case. :/ Which is the thing with Raphael's English -- I want to think that's a deliberate choice to overturn expectations about his subjectivity and what I'm afraid I think is that Pulley wants Raphael (and Mori) to sound intelligently attractive and for her that can only happen in upper-class British English. (This besides fact that no real stretch in learning is required for either Tremayne or Thaniel to fall for their respective counterparts, while Mori and Raphael do all the work of making sure they're ready to be Understood In European, feels like sort of a distillation of the issue.)
(I also feel very comfortable calling Mori-and-Tremyane-but-especially-Tremayne bad people! And I did like Tremayne and Raphael bonding over being the only people in the village who have done bad things, but it would be nice if anyone else cared that Tremayne's life's work is, you know, bad. Which: RELATEDLY, I was so narratively confused by Minna? I was expecting that at least the point of building her up and then immediately ditching her might be to present at least the shadow of a consequence at the end ... but no, she's there to make sure Tremayne has fun at a party twenty years later. What?)
no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 09:13 am (UTC)So thank you for making this post and hosting this discussion! I appreciate all your delicious thoughts.
Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-18 09:15 am (UTC)Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-18 09:17 am (UTC)I was so profoundly weirded out by it. And with everything else ... you couldn't make a "whiter" indigenous character than Raphael if you tried.
I also thought the way people learnt languages in the book was unrealistic. Of course different people have different levels of abilities in picking up languages, but I don't believe at all that Raphael could speak the kind of English he does in the book without spending a protracted amount of time in England or having an English-speaking community around him in Peru (and one person speaking English to you is not a community ... )
And the Minna thing was so weird!! It's so blatant Pulley actually got called out for it in an interview I read about it, and she was straight up like "yeah, don't want to write women because I don't want to write about myself". But ... why even have Minna in there then ... what was her purpose ......
no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 12:05 pm (UTC)(While perhaps not the intention of your review, I am ordering in a book in the history of malaria from the library!)
no subject
Date: 2018-01-18 12:06 pm (UTC)Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-18 01:05 pm (UTC)Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-22 03:58 am (UTC)The only narrative reason I can think of for the existence of Minna, honestly, is to draw out the reader perception of Markham's character to make him seem more likeable at the beginning ("look, he wants his wife to go with him and they love each other! what a relatively enlightened Victorian!") such that his unpleasant qualities can reveal themselves more gradually. But that would, you know, have more impact if she was actually there for it. Also .... to make him more resentful of Tremayne? I guess?
Re: warning: MANY FEELS
Date: 2018-01-22 04:00 am (UTC)