And we're done!
Thank you to everyone who posted a question. And a huge thanks to Carl for joining us today and answering them – it is much appreciated.
Next Tuesday, we’ll announce our theme for the July Reading group. A clue: it involves voting on the best of 52 books ...
And Carl signs off, with a final comment about West and Wells’s nicknames for each other – Panther (West) and Jaguar (Wells):
Updated
'Black Lamb is one of those lost classics that keeps getting rediscovered'
KoloKweel says:
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is one of the great books of the last century, an obvious masterpiece, yet I heard about it by accident, and never hear it mentioned. How could this happen? It seems fairly scandalous, especially when considering the (rightfully) enduring reputation of Pound’s Cantos, for example. Is the book destined to be a lost classic, and is that how it should be?
Guardian contributor You are right. I’ll take Black Lamb any day over Pound’s Cantos. A lot of this has to do with a certain purist mentality among academics who set agenda and form canons. Black Lamb is one of those lost classics that keeps getting rediscovered. It is a very long book, which means most academics won’t assign it.
samjordison has another:
I first heard of Rebecca West via HG Wells, as I was doing some research on him. I enjoyed the David Lodge book about their relationship. And can’t help but speculate on how they might have influenced each others work ... But I also have a feeling that those associations might not have delighted West. Did she feel trapped under his shadow?
Guardian contributor West got annoyed when she was questioned about Wells, but his influence on her is unmistakeable, even though they differed a good deal on literature and politics. What she liked about him was his breadth of vision, his concern with war and peace, military and domestic matters. He included ideas in his novels, and she like that even when she thought the novels suffered in terms of a slack style and poor characterization.
Swelter says:
I note that The Return of the Soldier was published in the UK and US while the war was still going on. I know that here in the US open dissent against the war was often punished with imprisonment. Was the novel seen as anti-war at the time it was published?
Guardian contributor I think some at the time some readers would have taken Return of the Soldier as anti-war, but it is so much more about what happens when the soldier returns that I don’t think the novel was ever especially controversial.
MachenBach has another comment – involving a drawing with West’s other name on it:
I have a drawing which has a label on the back of the frame saying ‘Dame Cicely Andrews’ and also ‘36 Heathfield Terrace’, and a subsequent label showing ownership of her agent Patricia Kavanagh. My question is twofold: a) what was West’s interest in the visual arts, and b) if the Feds come after me, you’ve got my back, right?
Guardian contributor How exciting. If only the Feds would take an interest in Rebecca West. If they come calling, I will tell them that one of her friends was Allen Dulles, founder of the CIA. West has a deep understanding of art, as you can see in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. She also wrote about Picasso.
MachenBach says:
I enjoyed Return of the Soldier, which seemed to offer far more on re-reading than on the first read, as good books ought to. The narrator reminded me a little of the narrator governess in The Turn of the Screw (somewhat self-deluded regarding her own status, more than a tad unreliable); I recall reading West’s (1916?) study of Henry James but don’t remember much about it other than that she was very good on James’s female characters. Would you care to remind me what she thought about James and his female characters? Do you see anything Jamesian (or anti-Jamesian) in Return of the Soldier?
Guardian contributor I’d call West a Jamesian who could also be critical of Henry James. She thought Isabel Archer was not tough enough, and so West wrote The Thinking Reed as a kind of riposte to Portrait of a Lady. You are right about the narrator governess. I don’t think Return of the Soldier would have been quite the same if West had not read James and also Ford Maddox Ford.
Our very own samjordison says:
I’m rather proud that we’ve given space to Rebecca West here on the Guardian. And I’ve loved writing about her. But in an age when people are so concerned with essentialism and in limiting who is allowed to talk about what I have sometimes been made conscious that I’m a man talking about a female writer. Do you think that would occur to West/ bother her at all? Where was she when it came to who had a right to say what? And did these questions trouble you as you wrote your works on her?
Guardian contributor West would not have been concerned about a male writing about women writers, although, of course, she might have objections to what that male said. I have never worried about this issue. Many of my editors have been female and have never commented on my “male” point of view. On the other hand, years ago one female reviewer said I should never be allowed to write about women. I don’t read that sort of thing these days.
Gramercy says:
Recently had the pleasure and privilege of introducing an Albanian immigrant to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon ... one of the greatest books [on the Balkans] ever written.
If this world were a fair place, Dame Rebecca would have been canonized long ago by every church, both East and West.
Guardian contributor Yes, I agree. The trouble is sooner or later she says something in her work that offends certain readers.
originalabsence asks:
Is Rebecca an under-served role model for 2018? Women who were big before the 1960s gear-change having been wrongly neglected and forgotten? (She plowed a strong furrow long before conditions became more favourable and the ground more amenable.)
Guardian contributor West’s anti-Communism, from the left point of view, gave aid and comfort to conservatives, and to this day she has not been forgiven. Doris Lessing told me she did not read West because of West’s politics. A whole generation of women missed her. Women like Sylvia Plath, as I noted in my Plath biography, did not know West’s work at all. Same for another of subjects, Susan Sontag. West is a towering figure precisely because she did not care about being fashionable.
AlexandraMullen has a question about West’s reputation and reception:
Despite the fact that I have spent most of my life in the classroom, I don’t recall seeing West on any syllabus, even in classes on the feminist novel or novels of the 1920s and 1930s. She was mostly ignored, but occasionally excoriated: one of my graduate school colleagues wrote her dissertation on West, but Columbia’s leading feminist critic, who had at first agreed to be her lead examiner, resigned from her committee on the grounds that the more she learned about West’s politics, the more she loathed her.
Finally, the question: As Marxism fades from the academy and thus West’s anti-Marxism seems less of a personal affront to the taste-makers, is West being rehabilitated as a thinker as well as a novelist?
Guardian contributor West is hard to categorize, so that’s part of the reason why academics don’t know what to do with her. They want a high modernist like Woolf. West, on the other hand, was a political commentator, literary critic, art critic, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, journalist, which is why biography, I think, is especially suited to understanding her output. Biography cuts across genres. She also was friends with radicals and establishment types, which in some quarters makes her suspect.
allworthy has been reading The Return of the Soldier and asks:
What would you say her achievements were? Been rereading Mrs Dalloway and struck by the similarities and differences between the two novels. Written fairly close together. Wonder if you have any views on that?
Also what were the challenges for women being published at the time? What should I read next?
Guardian contributor Woolf and West shared many similarities and respected one another, although they also criticized one another. I’d recommend reading Harriet Hume next to Orlando. They appeared at almost the same time. Harriet Hume explains a good deal about the nature of politics and about the relationships between men and women. Lots of women were published during West’s first years as a writer and she reviewed many of them. It is a pity that West’s reviews have not been republished, although some appear in The Young Rebecca and a long out of print book, Ending in Earnest.
'West's feminism was quite complex and individualistic'
thoughtballoons has two questions, the first about West’s feminism:
It appears to me individualistic and sometimes contemptuous. On one hand, I appreciate that she could, as Christopher Hitchens put it, “detect a pure bitch at twenty paces”, but sorry she had very little respect for women who chose private life and caregiving over public life and politics. In our own time feminism is still divisive amongst women, not the great unifier my generation hoped it would be. Could you give some of your insights into West’s feminism?
And the second question. Just as easily as she could sniff out “pure bitch”, she could spot the early warning signs of totalitarianism in a society. She was so politically astute I would love to have her thoughts on what’s going on in modern democracies today, especially the US, which is becoming unrecognizable. What do you think she would make of it?
Guardian contributor Take a look at Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and you will see West has considerable respect for strong women who choose to stay home, be mothers, and support their families that way. Her feminism, in short, was quite complex, and as you say, individualistic.
I can’t, of course, know what West would have made of politics today, but I suspect given all she knew about fascism, that she would say Trump is a neo-fascist.
Captain_Flint posted this West quote taken from a Paris Review interview conducted when she was 90 years old:
“I’ve never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvellous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can’t see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.”
Yep, life’s tough at 90 years old. I wonder what was West’s opinion about women.
Guardian contributor West has a very mixed reputation concerning women. I interviewed some of her friends who thought she hated women. And yet she had many close female friends. If she hated women, it was of a piece with her hatred of men—which was really her disappointment in human nature, I think. A Jewish writer in Hollywood once said to William Faulkner, “I don’t think you like Jews.” Faulkner replied, “You’re right. But I don’t like gentiles either.” West was a fierce critic—let’s put it that way.
Swelter says:
I was impressed with both the powerful symbolism and apparent clinical accuracy (based on my reading of more recent case histories) in the way West presented Chris’ amnesia in The Return of the Soldier. How much research did she do into such cases of “shell shock” before writing the novel? Did she have personal acquaintance with any victims of this trauma?
Guardian contributor West was a keen reader of psychology and took quite an interest in Freud. It was not so much from personal experience but her interest in the human psyche, I think, that made her so interested in the development of modern psychology.
Another from palfreyman:
A lot of what I’ve seen and read suggests that most readers seem to think The Return of the Soldier is about the war, maybe critical of it, and about the notion of shell-shock (or perhaps PTSD as we might now call it).
However it seemed to me, after reading it, that the novel uses these more as plot devices than necessarily major themes. For me, the book is a love story - about the relationship between Margaret and Chris, as well as about Jenny’s unrequited yearning for him.
Of course no great novel is “about” only one thing, but a lot of the detail in the work seems to me to have almost been influenced by her paramour’s Tono-Bungay, in which class criticism, social exploration and satire are all part of the mix, rather than being the essential bones of the work.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Thanks.
Guardian contributor The novel is a love story. In fact, it seems to me that in the end that is what it is all about. And you’re quite right about Tono-Bungay.
'West is one of the few writers in world literature to understand the dynamics of politics and of family life'
palfreyman asks:
You wrote The Literary Legacy of Rebecca West, and it made me wonder how, if at all, such a sometimes seemingly protean and contradictory writer could be described. Is there any single theme you think that might help define her work? If you were introducing someone to her work, or attempting, would you say: “You’ll like reading Rebecca West because she is ‘X’” whatever X might be?
In short, I’m seeking further recommendations on what West to read next, and am hoping for a book that might be quintessence of West and therefore help me understand why she is so influential/popular. If I, having only read the one book so far, read three or four of her books, and like them, I might then be in a position to acquiring one of yours (see - it’s in your interest to tell me all you can!) :)
Guardian contributor You’ll like reading Rebecca West because she is one of the few writers in world literature to understand the dynamics of politics and of family life, of the personal and the political. She had a grasp of modern government, of bureaucracy in ways that no other writer of her generation can rival. See what I mean by reading The Court and the Castle and The Birds Fall Down.
'The Return of the Soldier is a perfect novel, it seems to me'
RabBurnout asks:
Hi Carl, I really enjoyed Return of the Soldier - I found it wonderful: insightful, profound, evocative and brilliantly written. This is the first novel I have read, but will definitely read more.
What are your impressions of this novel, and its place in her oeuvre?
Do you think West could be called a modernist? Such was the depiction of the social fragmentation and imminent social upheaval in Return of the Soldier, with its contradictory, unreliable narrator and stylistic innovation.
Who influenced West? I’m very reminded of the work of Katherine Mansfield, reading West - something about the style and characterisation, and the empathy, intelligence, insight, and nuance. Am I right in seeing a similarity here?
Guardian contributor The Return of the Soldier is a perfect novel, it seems to me. It is beautifully written and deserves its place as West’s best known work. I do think West was a modernist for the reasons you specify. Among her influences: William Godwin and Ford Maddox Ford. She also wrote a short book on Henry James that is well worth reading. Her novel, The Thinking Reed, is a rewriting of James’s Portrait of a Lady.
Updated
A question from author Amanda Craig, on Twitter:
Hello, I wrote the foreword to West’s The Fountain Overflows @ViragoBooks and was astonished to find her account, in a realist novel, of a house haunted by a poltergeist. Did she really believe in the spirit world? https://t.co/3fCmkKYLm8
— Amanda Craig (@AmandaPCraig) June 22, 2018
Guardian contributor West did take the spirit world seriously. She wrote some stories about it in the 1920s and her diaries from the 1970s attribute various mishaps in her flat to poltergeist.
MachenBach has “a general question about biography as a literary form”:
I often find the conventional cradle-to-grave biography form a little uninspiring, and wonder why it is predominantly, in many ways, such a conservative literary form. Do you have any thoughts on that, or do you consider your role to be primarily that of a researcher/archivist/historian rather than a writer? There is, I suppose, a more formally adventurous counter-tradition (The Quest for Corvo, Like A Fiery Elephant etc), but this seems to be a niche. Who are the biographers you most admire, and why?
Guardian contributor I consider myself a writer first. I think biographers can get bogged down in chronology, but a good writer can circumvent that problem. How? Well, like novelists do. I’m writing a biography of William Faulkner right now and though I do take a chronological approach, within that chronology I use flashbacks and tell whole stories that violate the chronological pattern, just as Faulkner did in his work. I admire Robert Caro, James Boswell (my book, A Private Life of Michael Foot is my effort to write a biography that way Boswell did), James Anthony Froude, Richard Holmes—to mention just a few.
A question from Guardian books journalist siancain:
I’ve always wondered about her relationship with HG Wells. It’s tempting to look at it through modern eyes as an equal meeting of the minds – she being a fierce critic of his novel, him being attracted to her intellect. Was it really a relationship of equals and did West consider it so? It strikes me that he got the better deal, certainly in terms of sexual freedom. Did West come to resent his ability to come and go eventually?
Guardian contributor To begin with, Rebecca was a bit star struck, even though she had made fun of Wells in print. Soon enough, though, she took his measure and did consider herself his equal. He did get the better deal, especially after their son was born, and she had to keep the affair with Wells under wraps while he carried on with his married life. She became very resentful and tried several times to break it off with Wells and did not really succeed until she left for America in 1923.
And we're live!
Hello everyone!
Thanks so much for all these fascinating questions ... Already plenty of material to keep Carl nice and busy.
Guardian contributor
Join us for a webchat with Rebecca West biographer Carl Rollyson on Friday 22 June
Reading Rebecca West on the Reading group has been a fascinating subject for discussion this month. Her first novel The Return of the Soldier remains one of the defining descriptions of life on the home front during the first world war, as well as being subversive, compassionate and technically adroit. And it was just the start of a career stretching over 70 years and dozens of acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction.
As well as her literary legacy, there’s plenty of contention and controversy around West. Thanks to her habit of arguing both against extremists at both ends of the political spectrum, she has been claimed (and disowned) by both left and right wings. Her personal life was the subject of scandal and outrage. Famously, she had a long relationship with HG Wells and a son by him who would say “she was minded to do me what hurt she could”. And she baffled plenty of people with her religious beliefs, which took in gentle Christianity, fiercely blasphemous anti-Christianity and Manichaeism.
So it’s great to have a genuine expert on hand to tell us more about this extraordinary and impressive woman. Carl Rollyson was the president of the Rebecca West Society from 2003-2007, and the author of three books about her. His comprehensive biography, Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century was described in the Guardian as “authoritatively comprehensive”, and “meticulous” in the New York Times. His essay Rebecca West and the God That Failed focuses in more detail on facets of West’s life, such as her complex relationship with leftwing politics. And The Literary Legacy of Rebecca West considers her long writing career, as well as her numerous posthumous publications.
Carl will be an excellent guide – and I speak with extra confidence, because he has appeared on a Reading group webchat before, lending his considerable expertise to a conversation about Sylvia Plath. It may also interest you to know that Carl has written more than 40 books, taking in widely praised biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Norman Mailer, Martha Gellhorn, Susan Sontag and Michael Foot, among others.
So, there’s no shortage of things to ask about. But if you are still looking for inspiration, you could do worse than look at West’s final Paris Review interview. This was published in 1981, just two years before her death, when she was coming up for 90 - and was still producing fantastic material:
“I’ve never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvellous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can’t see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.”
“I find the whole idea of a professional army very disgusting still. Lacking a normal life, they turn into scoundrels. As Wellington said, they’re despised for being scoundrels and it’s not their fault and they die like flies and have the worst discomforts.”
Who wouldn’t want to know more about this person? Carl will be answering questions about her from 1pm (BST) on Friday 22 June - but do please feel free to get yours in early below.
Forgot to reply about Panther and Jaguar. It’s a writerly thing to do, I don’t know why. Ted Hughes and Sylvia did something similar. And Faulkner thought in terms of animals too when it came to human relationships. Jaguar is also kind of amusing to think of in relation to the paunchy Wells. I don’t know if he saw the humor in that.