If I enjoy something, I tend to do it in large gulps. Like my murder mysteries – once I decided that I loved UK crime dramas, I pretty much just sat down and watched all of them, one after another (driving Simon insane). And once I’d read one Iris Murdoch novel and decided I liked it, I then read all of Iris Murdoch’s 26 novels within about four years, silly stupid greedy me. I can’t tell you how much I regret never having another new Iris Murdoch novel to read, ever. That sucks.
This last week, I’ve been rereading The Book and the Brotherhood. And actually, I enjoyed it even more the second time around – I took my time and paid more attention to all the peripheral stuff going on. Murdoch’s novels are always, on the surface, about love and human relationships, but inside they’re about philosophy, morality, mortality, religion, the nature of human existence, life, the universe and everything. It’s all integrated seamlessly as part of the narrative, though – if you don’t feel like taking on the whole of creation, you can just read the novels as stories and be perfectly satisfied. They’re totally compelling, and Iris Murdoch has an enjoyably idiosyncratic prose style, which I love and can pick out a mile away. In homage, TODAY’S LIST is my top ten unmistakable signs that you’re reading an Iris Murdoch novel:
1. Detailed descriptions of clothing and food. Pretty much every scene includes some matter-of-fact description of what the characters are wearing and/or eating.
2. Starting a chapter with dialogue taking place in the aftermath of some crucial incident, and then backtracking to relate what happened.
3. Characters constantly rushing about in a mad heat of emotion, desperate to act on their feelings but with no clear idea of their own intentions. (Actually just yesterday I commented to Simon that Iris Murdoch’s novels are always full of people running around in crisis, a bit like Dostoyevski; and then today, reading a critical analysis of her work, I found out that she has in fact often been compared to old Dosty. Yessss!! External validation of my opinions!)
4. Run-on sentences. I’m sure this is done on purpose – it adds to the headlong, rushing feeling of the prose. Ditto for the enormous stacks of adjectives with no commas.
5. Constant impassioned speech-making, with lots of italics on really important points, which are then re-emphasised; not quite realistic speeches but somehow true, people desperately attempting to communicate their incommunicable experience and find some sort of connection.
6. Eccentric, oddly named upper-middle-class scholarly characters who are introduced with a huge rush of initial detail and backstory and meticulous description of their physical features.
7. Lots of water symbolism. Water as a catalytic plot device.
8. Weird philosophical mystic guru-type characters who exert a compelling influence over other characters.
9. Makeout scenes described very physically but unerotically (lots of struggling with clothing in awkward positions), with characters always experiencing ambiguous or conflicting intentions during the proceedings.
10. Love as violent insanity, usually ill-fated, often between characters with huge age differences or existing marriages, and usually ultimately defeated by convention and personal history.
Don’t let my nerdy listiness put you off – you really do need to read some Iris Murdoch, if you haven’t already. Try The Sea, the Sea or A Fairly Honourable Defeat.
