Disgrace in Redonda

It would be a profound understatement to say that I do not like J. M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” and yet I still find it a stunning work of art.  Reading the first part, I began to feel uneasy.  Pressing on, began to feel disgust.  Finally, I felt revulsion, pity, and a sense of defeat.  And yet...

Many keys have been pounded and much ink spilt in talking about the novel as a work of commentary on modern South Africa, on the specter of white western colonialism and its aftermath, and on Coetzee’s philosophy of history and the individual.  Some of the most interesting commentary I have read involves the treatment of women, especially in analyzing Lurie’s relationship with a black prostitute and a black student in the beginning of the book, where he wants to be a sort of “daddy” of the predatory nature, and his relationship with his daughter in the rest of the book, where he moves from active agent of black female debasement to a powerless protector of his white daughter at the hands of black men even worse than Lurie himself. 

Where the previous book in the Redonda read-along – “Amador” - dealt with a father’s idealized philosophical advice to his son, “Disgrace” offers us a nightmare vision of a father incapable of protecting his daughter and unable to come to terms with the world around him.  The claim in the first line that the good professor has solved the problem of sex does nothing but illustrate how unsolved that particular problem is.  After he violates one of his students and is dismissed from his position at the university, he retreats to his daughter’s little place on the outskirts of civilization.  We realize right away that, as little as he comprehends sex or his role in the incident with his student, he understands his own child even less.  She – a rather ungainly lesbian - is not at all the type of woman he would pursue or acknowledge, an observation that in itself speaks volumes about the professor.   During the book’s most uncomfortable moment – at least for me – two men and a boy arrive and ask to use the telephone.  This pretext leads to Lurie being locked in the bathroom and set on fire while his daughter is gang-raped and her shelter dogs are methodically shot in their cages.  During this, Lurie calls out “my child, my child” from the bathroom, and the futility of his lament almost made me choke.  I literally felt the need to go outside and take a breath of fresh air.  That Coetzee captures so much of the character’s internal life and the pedestrian violence of the situation with such sparse dialog is a wonder of literature.  At one point, the door to the bathroom opens and Lurie is able to catch a glimpse of the boy eating ice cream from a tub.  The moment reminded me of Achilles chasing Hector around the walls of troy and Homer taking the time to mention, in this horrific moment, that one of the places by which they ran was a spot where the women washed clothes.  Domesticity and everyday life rubbing elbows with cruel atrocities.  And that is sort of the point.  We exist in a world in which the two mingle, overlap, and feed into each other.

I’m still not sure what to make of the rest of the book and with his daughter Lucy’s decisions in it, but the work does bring to light two very uncomfortable truths about parents and children: 1.) After a certain point, our children are no longer under our guidance, nor are they necessarily understandable to us.  They are people, different people, not the same ones we raised and cared for.  They have their own agency.  And, even more painful for a father of a little girl, 2.) We can try, we can forever remain vigilant, we can pour our lives into our children, but we cannot protect them from everything.  Of course, the tragedies that will befall are often much less severe than those in “Disgrace,” but there are tragedies nonetheless The most precious things on this earth are susceptible to the ugly brutality of existence.  And yet –and here I think Lurie fails – we must try.  The “Disgrace” is in doing anything less.  His redemption came at a high price, but I am left wondering if it is any redemption at all.

Redonda 1a

 

I’ve overcome the revels of my 40^th birthday party and the start of the new year, feeling older but no wiser. This lack of sagacity is likely to be a permanent condition – considering I carry over each year and it grows more conspicuous with the passage of time - so let’s jettison all excuses and get the Redonda read-along under way.    January is about the relationships in the family, and so let’s begin with little steps.  Very little steps.

Sartre claimed that we are all “condemned to be free,” and Fernando Savater most certainly agrees with that sentiment.  The Duke of  Caronte , when not engaged in formal philosophy or poetry, has found the time to write a charming book to his son, Amador, and has titled his book after the young man.  The philosophy in the book is fairly straightforward and simple, but avoids talking down or oversimplification.  To a novice, I can think of few books as engaging as this.  In other words, it is perfect for the teenage reader for whom it was written.

Savater’s existentialism is delightfully evident from the beginning, and he advises the reader immediately that the keystone to the good life is to “do what you want.”  This would have been appealing to my teenage self, but like so much of the advice of elders, this is not exactly what it seems.  Before we can do as we wish, we must figure out what that is, what we are, and what our purpose is.  As Savater points out, while we know the purpose of a footballer or a hammer, we must think much harder to define what makes a person, because “we have no idea what human beings are for.’

Savater then touches on the function of ethics, of responsibility, and, throughout, the meaning of freedom.  Within this framework, he touches on material possesions and the idea of things vs. human relationships.  There are two things he touches on which I hope to be able to impart on my own daughter some day.  The first is that “giving yourself the good life in the end cannot be very different than granting a good life.”  In other words, we must humanize people, even those we find despicable, if we in turn wish to humanize our own existence and be humanized by others.  The second thing is that “from things, even the best things, can come only other things.”  Our relations with other people are what matters.

The final chapters on politics are as light as the rest of the book, and I do hope in the next book by the Duke of Caronte that we get some more substantial philosophy.

So, we’ve read a little tract of advice from a father to his son.  Next time, we will talk about the relationship of a father to his daughter, one full of despair, shame, and disgrace. 

Redonda history

Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a little history of the great Kingdom of Redonda.

The Kingdom of Redonda is the name for the micronation associated with the tiny uninhabited Caribbean island of Redonda.

The island lies between the islands of Nevis and Montserrat, within the inner arc of the Leeward Islands chain, in the West Indies. Redonda is currently legally a dependency of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. The island is just over one mile long and a third of a mile wide, rising to a 971-foot peak. The island teems with bird life, but is more or less uninhabitable by humans because there is no source of freshwater other than rain, and most of the island is extremely steep and rocky, with only a relatively small, sloping plateau area of grassland at the summit.

Nonetheless, from 1865 until 1912 Redonda was the centre of a lucrative trade in guano mining, and many thousands of tons of phosphates were shipped from Redonda to Britain. The ruins associated with the mineworkings can still be seen on the island.

Redonda also is a micronation which may, arguably and briefly, have existed as an independent kingdom during the 19th century, according to an account told by the fantasy writer M.P. Shiel. The title to the supposed kingdom is still contested to this day in a half-serious fashion. The "Kingdom" is also often associated with a number of supposedly aristocratic members, whose titles are awarded by whomever is currently the "King". Currently there are a number of individuals in different countries who claim to be the sole legitimate "King" of Redonda.

History of the "Kingdom"

The history of the "Kingdom" of Redonda is shrouded in doubt and legend, and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

During Shiel's lifetime

M.P. Shiel (1865-1947), an author of works of adventure and fantasy fiction, was the first person to give an account of the "Kingdom of Redonda," in 1929, in a promotional pamphlet for a reissue of his books.

According to tradition, Shiel's father, Matthew Dowdy Shiell, who was a trader and Methodist lay preacher from the nearby island of Montserrat, claimed the island of Redonda when his son, Matthew Phipps Shiell, was born. Supposedly the father felt he could legitimately do this, because it appeared to be the case that no country had officially claimed the islet as territory. Shiell senior is also said to have requested the title of King of Redonda from Queen Victoria, and as legend has it, it was granted to him, by the British Colonial Office rather than by Victoria herself, provided there was no revolt against colonial power.

The son (originally named Matthew Phipps Shiell but later known as the writer M.P. Shiel) claimed he was crowned on Redonda at the age of 15, in 1880, by a bishop from Antigua. However, as M.P. Shiel's recounting of this story never saw print until 1929, it is possible that some, or most, or possibly all of the story of his being crowned King of Redonda may in fact be pure invention.

In his writings about Redonda, however, Shiel is critical of the egotism that led him to accept the title, suggesting that there was may have been some truth behind the coronation and the kingship. Shiel also gave differing names to the bishop who performed the coronation: the Reverend Dr Mitchinson and the Rev. Hugh Semper.[4] These men were both genuine clerics in the Caribbean during this period. The contradiction could be explained as due to Shiel's faulty memory rather than total invention. In “About Myself” Shiel writes that his attempt to impose a tribute tax on the American guano miners was a request they refused. This early non-recognition of his kingship is another argument that the coronation occurred.

Several of Shiel’s works of fiction concerned various aspects of monarchy. One of his detective heroes is called Cummings King Monk. In Shiel's 1901 end-of-the-world story The Purple Cloud, the protagonist Adam Jeffson, the last man on earth, establishes himself as monarch of the devastated globe, while Shiel’s novel The Lord of the Sea (1901) has Richard Hogarth, another Overman figure, coming to dominate the world. In 1899, Shiel wrote about visiting Redonda in his adventure novel Contraband of War.

In later life, Shiel gave the title, and the rights to his work, to his chief admirer, London poet and editor John Gawsworth (Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong), the biographer of Arthur Machen, who was the realm's Archduke. Gawsworth (1912–70) seems to have passed on the title several times when the writer was low in funds. Gawsworth's realm has been facetiously termed "Almadonda" (by the Shielian scholar A. Reynolds Morse (1914-2000) after the Alma pub in Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, where "King Juan" frequently held court in the 1960s.

During the late 1950s, Gawsworth also apparently promised to make the first son of his friends Charles and Jean Leggett, Max John Juan Leggett, his Redondan heir if they gave the child his royal name of Juan.

Some Redondan scholars accept that Gawsworth bestowed the title on his friend the publican Arthur John Roberts in 1967, by "Irrevocable Covenant". Prior to this the late writer Dominic Behan (1928–89) also claimed Gawsworth transferred the title to him in 1960. It is also said that Gawsworth handed on the throne to one Aleph Kamal, whose peers include the novelist Edna O'Brien.

Self-appointed monarchs of Redonda include Marvin Kitman and William Scott Home. Scott Home's claim to the title was, he says, based on ESP and reincarnation. M.P. Shiel’s granddaughter, Lancashire housewife Mrs Margaret Parry, came to the fore in 1993 and was hailed as “Queen Maggie” of Redonda by various newspapers, including the Daily Mail.

Publisher, author and environmentalist Jon Wynne-Tyson, however, claims that Gawsworth, prior to dying in 1970, bestowed the kingship on him with the literary executorships, although the writer Iain Fletcher was the joint literary executor for Gawsworth.

Later developments

Jon Wynne-Tyson subsequently visited Redonda in 1979, on an expedition organized by the philanthropist and Shielian publisher A. Reynolds Morse. Wynne-Tyson ruled as King Juan II until abdicating in favour of the novelist Javier Marias of Madrid in 1997, transferring the literary executorship of Gawsworth and Shiel along with the title.

Arthur John Robert’s title was subsequently inherited by William L. Gates, whom Gawsworth had given the title of "Baron L'Angelier de Blythswood de Redonda". From his home at Thurlton, Norfolk, Gates, as "King Leo", presides over a group known as "The Redondan Foundation", not be confused with "The Redondan Cultural Foundation" set up by Paul de Fortis (see below). As in Gawsworth’s reign, meetings of these rival groups have been held at the Fitzroy Tavern in London. King Leo has reigned as king since 1989. Bob Williamson, who lived on Antigua until his death in 2009, set himself up as the rival "King Robert the Bald". King Robert the Bald was succeeded in 2009 by yachting writer Michael Howorth.

In 1988, the late London clergyman Paul de Fortis established "The Redondan Cultural Foundation". Because of what he viewed as the inaction of the various rival monarchs, de Fortis promoted a new king, Cedric Boston (born on Montserrat in 1960). Boston claimed the Redondan throne in 1984, winning the allegiance of a number of Gawsworth’s peers.

On the question of the kingdom of Redonda, Wynne-Tyson has written:

The legend is and should remain a pleasing and eccentric fairy tale; a piece of literary mythology to be taken with salt, romantic sighs, appropriate perplexity, some amusement, but without great seriousness. It is, after all, a fantasy.

A stellar legion of Redondan peers, largely writers, date back to the Shiel and Gawsworth eras. They include Arthur Machen, Edgar Jepson, Thomas Burke, Victor Gollancz, Carl Van Vechten, Arthur Ransome, Lawrence Durrell, Gerald Durrell, G.S. Fraser, Michael Harrison, John Heath-Stubbs, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller, Julian MacLaren-Ross, Philip Lindsay, Rebecca West, John Waller, August Derleth, Stephen Graham, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.B. Priestley, Eden Phillpotts, Stephen Potter, Martin Secker, Frank Swinnerton, John Wain, and Julian Symons. Actors ennobled during Gawsworth’s reign were Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Barry Humphries, Diana Dors, Dirk Bogarde, Mai Zetterling, Vincent Price, Joan Greenwood, and Robert Beatty. Also honoured were broadcasters Libby Purves, Roy Plomley and Alan Coren. King Xavier’s peers include Pedro Almodóvar, Francis Ford Coppola, A.S. Byatt, Alice Munro, Umberto Eco, George Steiner, Ray Bradbury, Frank Gehry, J.M. Coetzee, Eric Rohmer, and Philip Pullman.

Wynne-Tyson, Javier Marias, Bob Williamson, William Gates and Cedric Boston were all interviewed in the BBC Radio 4 documentary Redonda: The Island with Too Many Kings, broadcast in May 2007.

List of Kings

Undisputed

Matthew Dowdy Shiell, 1865–1880

Matthew Phipps Shiell, 1880-1947 (styled as King Felipe I)

John Gawsworth, 1947-1967 or 1970 (styled as King Juan I)

Disputed

Arthur John Roberts, 1967-1989 (styled as King Juan II)

Jon Wynne-Tyson, 1970-1997 (styled as King Juan II)

Javier Marias, 1997-2012 (styled as King Xavier)

A December Dawn

 

A December Dawn

The vagrant birds have fled

away

and the ice blanket of the north

descended

like a blue cloud of deep

sleep.

Bursting, succulent, departed roses haunt as

ghosts.

Grass, buried by inconsiderate snow,

struggles

and thrashes in a silent fight to

survive.

Darkest night coats the promiscuous

sky.

Then, the little sun climbs from the

earth,

A fiery eyewitness, frightened and

demurring.

Winter dawn persists and lingers the entire

day

before again creeps in the reigning

dark

and tomorrows gestate and await their

birth.

R. R. Shea

Doris Lessing

The Nobel winner Doris Lessing has died at the age of 94.  Her books are on the list of those I'm compiling for my daughter to read one day, and I have found her work to be both insightful and enjoyable, two traits that do not always coexist in literature.   Requiescat in pace.

What you can do

I'll be donating my "book" and "coffee shop" money for the rest of the year to UNICEF.  If you can, please give to help our friends in the Philippines.  You can donate HERE.

a few literature news items

First, Pierre Lemaitre wins the Prix Goncourt.  Here is France24 with the news.

Second, here is an interview in English with the supremely talented Andres Neuman.

Lastly, it's NaNoWriMo.  Go forth and produce!