Luther's review

The book wasn't about colonialism, it just happened to take place in a period where colonialism was rampant.

The book is about what happens to life after a Great Fire. What better candidate for a Great Fire than World War II? And what better place to demonstrate the consequences of said Fire than Japan? And why write about Japanese people if you don't know anything about them, but do happen to know a lot about Australian people? Hence, colonialism.

Being a period piece, to be true to the period one must take into consideration that colonialism was certainly not as poorly looked upon as it is today.

In hindsight, can anyone realistically endorse such colonialism? Certainly not, just as no one could, in hindsight, endorse the wildly racist propaganda posters plastered across America to belittle the Japanese. Why not criticize Hazzard for not addressing that issue?

In any case, to take time aside to rebuke colonialism would have been out of place.

I don't think it's reasonable to insist that anyone writing historical fiction be required to condemn everything that, since the advancement of our moral zeitgeist, we now deem immoral. Works of history? Of course, they must, or suffer just criticism. But historical fiction? History is, usually, not the point of fiction, regardless of what era it is set in.

If you were to choose to apply your logic to uncountable classic novels--The Scarlett Letter for treatment of women, The Stranger for unkind portrayal of Arabs--then they must all be as worthless as The Great Fire.

To make the apparently common mistake that to enjoy a novel, one must be able to deem its protagonists likable, upstanding, and morally irreproachable, one greatly limits one's list of feasibly enjoyable literature.

Huzzah! for a fantastic, intelligent, cogent appraisal! Too many people today believe that all literature must be filtered through our modern perceptions of the world, a belief that robs them of full understanding and enjoyment of the work. Bravo for you!

Rereading my review, I must confess that I find myself nodding in agreement with your criticisms of my unkind and unfair words. But before I start a reply, I should confess that I wrote my first review of this book a month or so after I had read it for the first time. I haven't thought about the book for a while, and the whole of it is not very fresh in my mind. I suppose I should have given it another look before writing a reply, but then again there's a lot to read and not much time.

Although I thought I had made myself fairly clear the first time around, I should say that Hazzard's composition is impeccable--she has managed to create what in many ways a beautiful fictional world. She is a master in crafting language and mood, and I doubt that anyone would disagree with that. And I must stress that I don't demand an author who agrees with my views in order to be great. They just have to be convincing.

I'm not asking for a critique of colonialism. My only point is her world, however perfectly constructed, rings hollow and false to me on many levels. This is of course a matter of taste, but it is an important point that I feel I did not make clear in my previous post. It is a hyper-romanticized version of the past, a hyper-nostalgic vision of the world that the "Great Fire" put an and to once and for all. The tragedy in the Great Fire seemed to me to be less about the the horrors of the war than with the collapse the Ms. Hazzard's imagined empire.

I must also say that when one writes historical fiction, this automatically presupposes a viewpoint from which one views the past. Hazzard chose her characters, settings and events with care. History may not be the "point" but it is a tool, and in a work as atmospheric as this, I doubt that it is far from the heart of the matter.

(As an aside regarding your "Zeitgeist" charge, I must say that it seems to me Shirley Hazzard's book is in many ways in line with a a new vogue: the good and simple world of the British Empire. But I really haven't thought it through all that systematically.)

I read, and, like you, I try to read critically. I do not expect either the writer or the work to align with my own personal moral code or reflect the so-called Zeitgeist. However, if I cannot object to a book that I find in some ways intellectually simplistic, superficially nostalgic or ridiculously romanticized, then what is the use of a forum such as this?

First, I should say that I'm an American, and perhaps not familiar with any current trend toward idealizing the British Empire. I was under the impression that that it was sort of looked on the way America looks on slavery--a sort of "Shame on us, weren't we silly back then!" attitude. But like I said, I'm not British, and don't know how British people feel about it.

Anyway, I don't think Hazzard, in the book, was ignorant of the hubris of colonialism and the sort of proud veneer of traditional British upper class life. As to the colonialism, she painted an altogether horrifying picture of Driscoll's treatment of a young Japanese boy in occupied Japan--he had him in a barn and was "keening" like an animal at the boy for some small infraction, driving the boy to suicide.

And it occurs to me now that everything that took place in Japan in the book didn't take place in a colonized country, but in an *occupied* postwar country. But I digress. She certainly didn't paint in a flattering light.

When Leith goes back to visit his mother in London after the death of his father, if I remember correctly, there is allusion to him being a little bit baffled at the sort of traditional accoutrement of his mother's lifestyle after what he undoubtedly witnessed as a soldier in Europe and a chronicler in the East.

Furthermore, it seemed to me that the romance between Leith, a soldier, who saw every horror the war had to offer, no doubt shattering any world-vision of idyllic refinements, colonial or otherwise, and Helen, a 17 year old girl who has yet to witness enough things to cause her to realize life is not as pretty as all that, symbolizes the sort of shudder that must have gone through the world's gentries after the war. A forced loss of innocence, a deflowering of the overoptimistic ideals and quaintness pretended to by the British empire. As if to say, "If this life, this world, is truly what you love, as you say it is, you are going to have to come to terms with the blood and the grief and the squalor just behind all this." As Helen had to realize if she was to love Leith. The end of the book doesn't assert that such an adjustment is possible.

Anyway. That's all, naturally, speculation. I apologize if I appeared to be angry, that wasn't my intent. My original comment, in addition to being a response to your review, was also a response to the frustration that builds every time I read one of the myriad of vapid reviews on this site that say, in marginally less astute English, "This character was depressing, nothing good happened to them, I hated this book!"

Your review was, far from being vapid, more eloquent than the large majority of the reviews to be found here. So I shouldn't have sprung on you. Perhaps I noticed, by dint of the quality of your writing, that you would be far more likely than any of those people to understand the words in syntax in any potential comment of my devising, so I took the opportunity to vent.

In summation, I must have sounded like a prick. My bad.

Don't worry about sounding like a prick, I actually like being challenged (which is probably why I write tend to post mildly obnoxious reviews. I don't write a phrase like "bombastic trash" and not expect to be called out). Argumentative by nature I suppose, plus it helps me clarify my opinions. I unfortunately don't have a copy of the book anywhere near me at the moment. I'd like to continue the argument, but I'm afraid that I have nothing but my rapidly fading memory of it to back my claims. That being said, a few clarifications and thoughts regarding your last post—

I think your citing of the episode concerning Driscoll and the Japanese boy is instructive. If memory serves, this is one of the parts that annoyed me. Driscoll is, in Hazzard's work, a bad guy. He is emblematic of the new order, the barbarian at the gate, counterposed to Leith, the educated traveler linguist. To pull back a bit, it seems a microcosm of the larger division of characters: the vulgar Australian and American characters vs. Leith and his pals. Following this line of interpretation a bit further, Japan is an occupied country, and occupied by the new victors who have ousted the old order. The situation in Japan is almost the diametrical opposite to that of the colonial pre-war empire (in my dimly remembered reading of Hazzard, of course).

When I spoke about colonialism in my previous post, I was not talking about Japan, but rather about the mindset that seems to inform much of the critical judgments of the book. (Here again I must stress that Hazzard does seem to have a definite historical consciousness, and it is not a neutral one. Although we can enjoy the book no matter what, it still exists as an integral part of its construction.) I think it is at this point when the question begs to be answered: What is the Great Fire? The title refers to an event that occurs in time and place. It is of course, none other than the great conflagration of the Second World War. Yet I think that this fire metaphorically at least speaks to the destruction of one world and the painful birth of a new. It is the passing of hegemony from one world system to another. This is of course, not the point of the novel, only its backdrop, although I think that is central to Ms. Hazzard's construction and characterization.

Thinking back on reading the book, I think the moment that made me want to throw it across the room was when Leith talks to the young American (or was it Australian?) soldier who had also been courting Helen. I can't really remember what was said, or even the context, other than that this young guy was giving up his wooing of Helen. Leaving that aside, there was one part in which the soldier relates how the new rulers of Japan (i.e. the Americans) characterize Leith. The young soldier says they call him "effete." (I think Hazzard may even at this moment spelled "effete" like "ee-feet" or something like that, as if to show how vulgarity permeates these characters through their inelegant pronunciation.) So here we have it, effete versus vulgar. It is like a comedy of manners without the comedy.

So I guess in closing all I want to say is that Shirley Hazzard's politics are not what I think makes the book somewhat banal and, in my opinion, over-rated. It is rather her simplistic characterizations based on the simplistic polarizations which seem to have their philosophical bases in her politics. In my opinion she is too much a prisoner of her conception of history.

I'm sure that there was much more to the book that I missed, I just found it mildly sickening, wading through the pages of cultured and worldly Leith, and the innocents who don't have a chance (Helen and her brother) and the one dimensionally disgusting Driscolls. Perhaps I read it in the wrong state of mind, and I'm sure it was much more complex. For instance, I don't really remember the episode of Leith back in Britain. Actually, I remember almost nothing about Leith and Helen's love affair; but I maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. I'm probably too hung up on small details. If I happen to pick it up any time in the future, I will definitely be doing it with your suggestions and criticisms in mind.

Anyway, keep calling me out when I make outrageous and untenable claims.

I do agree with Luther that the book is deeply flawed. Aldred is impossibly brave and noble, Helen is caring and wise beyond her years; the Driscolls are one-dimensional, soulless vulgarians. These aren't people - they're cartoon characters.

I'm not complaining because the characters weren't likable, upstanding, or morally irreproachable. I'm saying they were one-dimensional, implausible and - as a consequence - unaffecting. Making the whole book impossible to take seriously.

And although focusing on colonialism is a bit of a red herring, as has been noted in the discussion already, one might reasonably compare "The Great Fire" to Paul Scott's masterpiece, "The Raj Quartet", and find that Ms Hazzard is left in the dust. She may not have been under any obligation to write in an insightful manner about the situation in postwar Asia. Neither, presumably, was Paul Scott. But, by capturing the Anglo-Indian milieu in such a nuanced, sensitive way, he has written an infinitely better book.

OK - technically it was four books, I suppose.