"Hisses, treadlings, clunks and saw-edged whines"

Some clippings from Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, while I wait for the dryer downstairs to free up. (My Kindle and my computer are rarely in the same place at the same time.) First, an overall note: it starts off wonderfully but runs out of steam, mimetically I guess. The book is about Russia between Stalin and Brezhnev; Spufford is interested in fairy tales, and wants to think of the Khrushchev era in terms of the Russian fairytale trope of the "self-victualling tablecloth"; the shoe doesn't quite fit, but comes close enough that the book isn't entirely silly. It is arranged in groups of vignettes that are each supposed to illustrate daily life in some part of this era; each group is introduced by a brief historical overview. The social range extends from low-level party workers to Khrushchev. Because the fairy tale was supposed to be powered by science, there is a lot of writing about mathematical economics and genetics and the like. I thought this was variable in quality and generally suffered from Spufford's preference for metaphors over explanations. A chapter about a scientist dying of lung cancer, in particular, narrates the progress of cancer through one's genes cells at inordinate length and with a hideous overreliance on the word "gloop." It is probably the worst science writing I have ever read -- esp. because, as I hope the clippings here and in prev. posts indicate, it's written by a remarkable prose stylist -- and deserves an award of some kind.

Nevertheless, here are the clippings:

a discordant symphony of hisses, treadlings, clunks and saw-edged whines

(about a plywood factory)

The train passed through Baltimore, Philadelphia and Jersey City, America turning its back view to him as the carriages slid athwart streets and behind rows of red-brick buildings. He gazed and speculated. It was like looking at a man facing away from you, and trying to guess what was in his pockets. He saw rusted fire-escapes clamped to the back of buildings and bundles of electrical wires in fat festoons looping from wall to wall. He saw oil storage tanks, he saw rubber tyres burning on a wasteland in a black smeech of smoke, he saw billboards advertising trinkets and cigarettes. The Americans seemed keen on neon signs, not just for important or official purposes, but everywhere they could be fitted in, violet and green and red, in humming sputtering anarchy. Troyanovsky translated some for him: MOTEL, CRAZY GOLF, JACK’S VALUE AUTO. Sometimes the view turned disconcertingly to blank virgin forest, as if America had tendrils of Siberia reaching right up into its metropolises.

(Re fire escapes, cf.)

Outside, the late summer day had become one of those evenings where the sky has the pure, clear colour of darkening water, moving to black through deeper and deeper blues.

And:

an expression of bafflement on a face like a sweating cheese

And:

Ask the computer and it would obey, as ready as a genie in a bottle – and as intolerant of badly-framed wishes.

And:

What has come over me? thought Sasha. He remembered a joke. What is a question mark? An exclamation mark in middle age.

And:

The closer a science was to practicality, the more it was co-opted into serving the practical needs of power. The closer it was to the dangerous ground of social science, on the other hand, the more distorted by ideology it tended to become. And the more abstract it was, the more intellectually uncorrupted it was likely to remain. The result was a landscape of intellectual lives laid out very differently from its counterparts abroad. Where the United States (for example) was a society ruled by lawyers, with a deep well of campus idealism among literature professors and sociologists, the Soviet Union was a society ruled by engineers, with a well of idealism among mathematicians and physicists. Law, economics, history were sterile, insignificant fiefdoms, ruled by ‘little Stalins’

And:

The car was not in good shape. The muffler banged and the gears stridulated as it lurched off the snowbank and away. Also, someone had been sick in the back and the mess had been incompletely cleaned up. Chekuskin pulled the tails of his overcoat up and sat as far as he could from it.

And:

Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin was a neat old, solid old, dry old pol, with deep lines running from his nose to the outside corners of his upper lip, which lifted his cheeks, when he smiled, into little sardonic bunches of muscle as round as billiard balls.

And, amid the wreckage of the lung cancer chapter:

True, it is a disgusting noise he makes. It begins as a commonplace wheeze in his throat, but tumbles down into his chest where it hacks and rattles and audibly moves clots of viscous wet stuff around, till the wet stuff has been dragged up into his airway, and he’s in a gasping, gargling struggle to get it off his epiglottis, and out, so that he can breathe again. He spits into his handkerchief, clean this morning, now stiff and crusty, stained with nameless emulsions. He’s been bringing up the traditional jade mayonnaise of bronchitis every winter for as long as he can remember, but this is something different, something thicker and redder and meatier, like liquescent liver. He folds the handkerchief away, and tries to muster his persuasive powers.

The Mechanics of Alcoholism ca. 1880

Orwell has an admirable plot summary of George Gissing's novel The Odd Women:

An elderly spinster crowns a useless life by taking to drink; a pretty young girl marries a man old enough to be her father; a struggling schoolmaster puts off marrying his sweetheart until both of them are middle-aged and withered; a good-natured man is nagged to death by his wife; an exceptionally intelligent, spirited man misses his chance to make an adventurous marriage and relapses into futility; in each case the ultimate reason for the disaster lies in obeying the accepted social code, or in not having enough money to circumvent it.

I thought the novel was good in the best traditional way -- skilfully constructed so as to be both reasonably panoramic and reasonably unified, and populated with many entirely plausible characters. (The prologue-like first chapter is by far the worst thing about it: it has a misleading air of the programmatic and tract-like.) It is also, as Orwell says, very much a product of its time, and contains much interesting historical information. I was fascinated by this bit about the mechanics of taking-to-drink:

Having locked her door, Virginia made certain preparations which had nothing to do with natural repose. From the cupboard she brought out a little spirit-kettle, and put water to boil. Then from a more private repository were produced a bottle of gin and a sugar-basin, which, together with a tumbler and spoon, found a place on a little table drawn up within reach of the chair where she was going to sit. On the same table lay a novel procured this afternoon from the library. Whilst the water was boiling, Virginia made a slight change of dress, conducive to bodily ease. Finally, having mixed a glass of gin and water—one-third only of the diluent—she sat down with one of her frequent sighs and began to enjoy the evening.

Her bottle was all but empty; she would finish it to-night, and in the morning, as her custom was, take it back to the grocer's in her little hand-bag. How convenient that this kind of thing could be purchased at the grocer's! In the beginning she had chiefly made use of railway refreshment rooms. Only on rare occasions did she enter a public-house, and always with the bitterest sense of degradation. To sit comfortably at home, the bottle beside her, and a novel on her lap, was an avoidance of the worst shame attaching to this vice; she went to bed, and in the morning—ah, the morning brought its punishment, but she incurred no risk of being detected.

Brandy had first of all been her drink, as is generally the case with women of the educated class. There are so many plausible excuses for taking a drop of brandy. But it cost too much. Whisky she had tried, and did not like. Finally she had recourse to gin, which was palatable and very cheap. The name, debased by such foul associations, still confused her when she uttered it; as a rule, she wrote it down in a list of groceries which she handed over the counter. 

Here is a description of the relevant character before she takes to drink:

Virginia (about thirty-three) had also an unhealthy look, but the poverty, or vitiation, of her blood manifested itself in less unsightly forms. One saw that she had been comely, and from certain points of view her countenance still had a grace, a sweetness, all the more noticeable because of its threatened extinction. For she was rapidly ageing; her lax lips grew laxer, with emphasis of a characteristic one would rather not have perceived there; her eyes sank into deeper hollows; wrinkles extended their network; the flesh of her neck wore away. Her tall meagre body did not seem strong enough to hold itself upright. 

And after:

A disagreeable redness tinged her eyelids and the lower part of her nose; her mouth was growing coarse and lax, the under-lip hanging a little; she smiled with a shrinking, apologetic shyness only seen in people who have done something to be ashamed of—smiled even when she was endeavouring to look sorrowful; and her glance was furtive.

There are many such descriptions of faces and heads, almost always interesting. One of the best, I think, is the picture of the heroine, as seen by the "exceptionally intelligent, spirited man" who avoids her in the end out of a sort of moral laziness:

...her calm consciousness that she had not a beautiful face. No, it was not beautiful; yet even at the first meeting it did not repel him. Studying her features, he saw how fine was their expression. The prominent forehead, with its little unevenness that meant brains; the straight eyebrows, strongly marked, with deep vertical furrows generally drawn between them; the chestnut-brown eyes, with long lashes; the high-bridged nose, thin and delicate; the intellectual lips, a protrusion of the lower one, though very slight, marking itself when he caught her profile; the big, strong chin; the shapely neck—why, after all, it was a kind of beauty. The head might have been sculptured with fine effect. And she had a well-built frame. He observed her strong wrists, with exquisite vein-tracings on the pure white. Probably her constitution was very sound; she had good teeth, and a healthy brownish complexion.