Let me admit at the start that I bought this book because of its cover. Let me also admit that I only finished it because of what I paid for it.
In a recent class, we discussed Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey, and I raised a question I’ve asked in every class where I’ve studied Homer: how come we never hear about the bad Homers? I count myself among those who say that Homer’s epics came down through a tradition of oral literature, evolving through years and generations of orators, eventually captured in the texts we have now. But it’s safe to assume that there were fringe versions of the epics and less-than-sterling orators who recited them. And maybe if your town wasn’t on the hot orator circuit, you had to listen to the bad Homers. The ones whose renditions had less, shall we way, artistry about them? “What’s he talking about now?” “Genealogy stuff.” “Oh, Zeus! Not again with the genealogy!” “He likes his genealogy.” “Enough already with the genealogy! Get back to the war scenes!”
I mean no disrespect to Neil Bell as a hard-working, hugely prolific writer who put food on his family’s table and kept a roof over their heads. But had he been living back in ancient Greece, I suspect he would have been considered a bad Homer. I’ve read a few of his books now, and I can see a definite pattern of stylistic bad habits emerging.
One is that Neil Bell apparently thought there was no such a thing as a bad story. Characters in his book are constantly popping up and, within a page or two of being introduced, launching into a story. “Shall I tell you how I came by this pipe?” the man asks, and we’re off for the next five pages on the saga of the man, his unhappy childhood (all Neil Bell childhoods are unhappy), his troubled youth, his encounter with some fascinator of uncertain origin, some nasty scrape, perhaps a romantic entanglement, and somewhere in the midst of it all the gaining of a pipe.
Now, once in a while, once in a book, this thing can be delightful. The first few times I encountered it in one of Neil Bell’s books, I was reminded of the scene in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie where the soldier comes up to the women in the restaurant and says, “Let me tell you about a dream I had….” In the movie, the sheer brazen non sequitur-ness of it is stunning.
But the sixth or tenth time it happens: Oy, vey!
Well, Mrs. Rawleigh and Mrs. Paradock is almost a babushka doll of these moments. We start with the story of how Frank Rawleigh got a job with Hamford’s [read Foyle’s] bookstore, rose through the ranks, married, and was living a comfortable life until one day he mysteriously disappeared.
Then we’re off on the story of how poor Mrs. Rawleigh copes with Frank being gone. A few months. A year. Years.
How she does it is with the aid of her live-in help and Jill-of-all-trades, Mrs. Paradock. When Frank’s money runs out, they have to find a way to make some more. They buy a chicken farm. Soon turns out they’ve been swindled (but not before getting a good long story about how the farm came to be up for sale).
So they try … well, I lost track along the way, but there was a massage parlor and a fortune-telling operation somewhere in there. Each involving oddball characters who wander in and sooner or later begin, “Let me tell you about a dream I had….”
Until one day, seven or eight years later, when Frank shows up at Mrs. Rawleigh’s door. Where has he been all this time?
“Let me tell you about that,” he begins. You need not hear the rest: it’s long, convoluted, and pointless. Nobody wants him around the place, anyway, and he’s out the door faster than leftover fish.
And the point of all this was …?
Oh, yes, and Mrs. Rawleigh and Mrs. Paradock both meet nice guys they decide to marry. Good for them.
But still, the point of all this was …? Besides a few hours killed in search of one?
And here we get to Neil Bell’s worst habit. Pointless stories are bad enough. Pointless commentary, though?
Now, there is nothing wrong with taking a detour or two along any narrative way to offer some interesting commentary. With some writers, the commentary is better than the story itself.
But what about when it’s not? What if it’s just a detour?
Let me offer just a small example of what I mean.
So Frank Rawleigh has returned. His wife sends him away to find a hotel for the night (this is not Odysseus and Penelope reunited at last). Now she waits with her new, good boyfriend (John, the doctor) for Frank to return and have “the big talk.”
“What time was it?” John asks (what time is Frank coming back):
“Nine sharp.”
“Ten minutes. Let’s drop it. Play me something.”
“What shall I play?”
“Something rollicking to clear the air. O by God no. He might hear you coming in. No, don’t play anything. Whatever it was it might be wrong. To him. We’ll read the evening papers. One can always escape into the news. I’ve often see men waiting to go into the theatre for a major operation poring over a newspaper. I suppose it’s the best way of escaping from one’s thought ever devised.”
The minutes dragged away. Neither knew what they were reading. Suddenly Ann said, “Here he is,” and a moment later the bell rang and presently Norma opened the door and Frank came in.
Now, no one ever keeps a stopwatch on a scene in a novel. There is no reason why Neil Bell couldn’t have cut right from Ann and John talking to Frank came in.
So why did he tell us that there were ten minutes to spare?
For no other reason than to mention this completely extraneous and irrelevant observation that reading a newspaper is a good way to kill time.
That’s it. There was utterly no other reason to put those words into this book. This was a thought that occurred to Neil Bell sometime in the writing of Mrs. Rawleigh and Mrs. Paradock, and by God he was going to work it in.
This sort of thing happens on stage when there’s an unexpected delay, when an actor is late walking on. If Mrs. Rawleigh and Mrs. Paradock were a play, the actors playing Ann and John might ad-lib a few lines to kill the time until the actor playing Frank walked on stage.
But this is a novel. Neil Bell is playwright, cast, and stage manager. He’s deliberately holding up Frank so John can say these pointless lines about reading a newspaper.
Nothing more. Not a colorful anecdote. Not a witty aside or pithy observation. He’s going to hold up the show just to tell us that reading a newspaper is a good way to kill time. And he’s going to actually make the reader kill time to do it.
“What’s he saying now?” “That reading a newspaper is a good way to take your mind off things.” “Enough with the newspapers! Get back to the freakin’ story!”
And this is why Neil Bell would have been one of the bad Homers.