Faction ~ sketch
Published 1920
(First read 18/08/2013)
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
The Inheritor
Fiction ~ novel
Published 1930
Approx. 108,000 words
(First read 14/08/2013)
SHORT VERSION: A
young man of great beauty believes that (1) he is cursed, and (2) he
needs to get away from the modern world and 'back to nature'. Things
don't turn out well for him so he goes for the simple unhappy ending
option. I guess this one might be classed 'a supernatural[ish]
psychological melodrama', with the usual caveat about the Benson brand
of melodrama.
LONG VERSION: Blimey! ~ never has an author taken so long (316pp.) to tell a story so insubstantial.
It kicks off at Cambridge University, more precisely at King's College [surprise!]. Steven Gervase, a student¹ is 20 years old [surprise! again] and [surprise! ~ okay, that's enough of that] has the looks of a Greek god and is a popular chap. One of the dons watching over his career is Maurice Crofts, who is 25 ~ how he's got to be a don at that age isn't explained, maybe it was perfectly normal in those days. 'Those days', by the way, are 1929-30 ~ EFB mentions a date again, though really all his books are set in one and the same time: Benson Meantime, somewhere between 1890 and 1914, a magical period in which, though an occasional 'motor' might flash by on its way to a 'cinematograph', nothing really ever changes.
Where was I? Ah yes. This post-adolescent Maurice², this donkin
is, despite his tender years, pretty much the stereotypical elderly
Oxbridge don: rather stuffy, a shade over-devoted to the academic life, a
confirmed bachelor dismissive of persons of the female persuasion ...
Maurice thinks he sees hidden depths in Steven, or rather, he thinks he sees another mysterious side to his character. Steven, who has just unceremoniously dumped his best pal (who is known as 'The Child'!) and is on the look-out for a new one, obligingly gives Maurice a glimpse of what that other side is ... by charming a squirrel out of a tree. [No, I'm not making this up.] It turns out that this Greek god of a young man is ...
No,
you really do have to read it to fully appreciate the unutterable
daftness of the plot. I'll just sum it up as follows: Maurice suddenly
comes to the realization that he loves ~ no, not 'loves': adores ~ no, not 'adores': worships (these are all his own words ~ honest!) Steven and wants to be initiated into his mysteries. Oh but it's not sexual, no! ~ Maurice is always very
careful to point that out, immediately after he's alluded to his idol's
breath-taking beauty for the umpteenth time ~ barely a page goes by
without someone alluding to it³.
Steven is wonderfully,
miraculously, sublimely gorgeous, and Maurice loves-adores-worships him ~
despite not really knowing him to any great extent ... OH BUT IT'S NOT SEXUAL!
I was meant to be summarizing, wasn't I? Well, Maurice goes for a holiday at the Gervases' ancestral home in Cornwall, over which there hangs a preposterous I-can't-be-arsed-to-dream-up-an-explanation-for-it curse. He proves to be de trop and is effectively told, like 'The Child' before him⁴, to sling his hook. He does.
After various tribulations (most notably marriage, y'know, to a woman), during which yet another perfectly blameless but sadly inconvenient character is summarily bumped off, Steven attempts to reform himself, but fails. The End.
The Inheritor
has one of the most idiotic plots I've ever laid eyes on, even by EFB's
generally rather low standards. With the exception of Maurice, who's
really only interesting by virtue of being such a clear-cut case of
violently repressed homosexuality, and who pretty much disappears
halfway through (though he does at least manage to avoid the Benson
guillotine), and Steven's aunt, who has some comic potential, the
characters are sub-cardboard-cutout. And vast swathes of the novel are
endless interior monologue ... of the dull variety. Nothing
categorically and incontrovertibly supernatural happens, unless you
count one case of squirrel-charming. The whole thing is simply asinine.
P.S. If I was a serious literary critic with psychoanalytical tendencies [possibly a contradiction in terms]
and, more importantly, if I gave at least half a stuff, I could perhaps
cobble together a theory which would feature the phrase 'a metaphor for
E. F. Benson's homosexuality' very heavily. But I'm not, and I don't,
so I won't.
¹ I'm not sure EFB ever gets round to mentioning what he's studying, but one can safely assume it's Classics.
² It has to be said that if Benson had made him 60 years old, the traditional age for your average literary don, the whole thing would've been creepy beyond belief.
³ After 50 pages or so you feel like punching Steven's perfect mush. The feeling lasts until the last page.
⁴ Who EFB sees fit to kill off while he's off-stage, for no reason whatever.
Published 1930
Approx. 108,000 words
(First read 14/08/2013)
LONG VERSION: Blimey! ~ never has an author taken so long (316pp.) to tell a story so insubstantial.
It kicks off at Cambridge University, more precisely at King's College [surprise!]. Steven Gervase, a student¹ is 20 years old [surprise! again] and [surprise! ~ okay, that's enough of that] has the looks of a Greek god and is a popular chap. One of the dons watching over his career is Maurice Crofts, who is 25 ~ how he's got to be a don at that age isn't explained, maybe it was perfectly normal in those days. 'Those days', by the way, are 1929-30 ~ EFB mentions a date again, though really all his books are set in one and the same time: Benson Meantime, somewhere between 1890 and 1914, a magical period in which, though an occasional 'motor' might flash by on its way to a 'cinematograph', nothing really ever changes.
Maurice thinks he sees hidden depths in Steven, or rather, he thinks he sees another mysterious side to his character. Steven, who has just unceremoniously dumped his best pal (who is known as 'The Child'!) and is on the look-out for a new one, obligingly gives Maurice a glimpse of what that other side is ... by charming a squirrel out of a tree. [No, I'm not making this up.] It turns out that this Greek god of a young man is ...
I was meant to be summarizing, wasn't I? Well, Maurice goes for a holiday at the Gervases' ancestral home in Cornwall, over which there hangs a preposterous I-can't-be-arsed-to-dream-up-an-explanation-for-it curse. He proves to be de trop and is effectively told, like 'The Child' before him⁴, to sling his hook. He does.
After various tribulations (most notably marriage, y'know, to a woman), during which yet another perfectly blameless but sadly inconvenient character is summarily bumped off, Steven attempts to reform himself, but fails. The End.
² It has to be said that if Benson had made him 60 years old, the traditional age for your average literary don, the whole thing would've been creepy beyond belief.
³ After 50 pages or so you feel like punching Steven's perfect mush. The feeling lasts until the last page.
⁴ Who EFB sees fit to kill off while he's off-stage, for no reason whatever.
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