THE BLACK PRINCE

Literature Meets Telenovela

If Dostoyevsky had taken a big hit of ecstasy and — by God knows what means — teleported himself on a modern British telenovela set, this book, 'The Black Prince', would have been born.

Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in "Oscar and Lucinda", 1997

Let me start by saying that literature should not imperatively be fun.

Literature is a form of education. And like a child trudging reluctantly to school, we might not always enjoy it, but all the same, we must endure it. And whilst some literary classics that I’ve read, I have enjoyed enormously, there are still books that have bored me to an extent that almost required a defibrillator afterward. Naturally, I learned from them. What Dostoyevsky has taught me on the human psyche, with all its inconsistencies and failings, no other writer has taught me. All the same, The Brothers Karamazov is no party with champagne.

And yet, if Dostoyevsky had taken a big hit of ecstasy and — by God knows what means — teleported himself on a modern British telenovela set, this book, The Black Prince, would have been born.

Picture this. It’s 1970s prissy-perfect London. Enter Bradley Pearson, a washed-up novelist pushing sixty, who dreams of escaping the city to finally write his magnum opus. But alas, every time he is ready to leave, the doorbell rings, bringing chaos with it. Arnold, his so-called best friend (a smug, highly successful writer) is always barging in, followed by a crew of sneaky intruders: Bradley’s histrionic ex-wife, her scheming brother, his depressed sister. They all pull at him in different ways, each with their own manipulative agenda. As tensions escalate, the story unfolds with a whirlwind of violence, seduction, jealousy, and suicide, leading to a wildly unexpected climax. In the end, Bradley does write his masterpiece, but not at all as he envisioned. It is the book we have in our hands. It tells of that which unfolded after the first doorbell.

With the cutting psychoanalytical precision that is characteristic of Murdoch, the novel dives deep into the swamp of human relationships. All those things that polite society hides beneath a well-starched surface: the secret betrayals, the petty cruelties, the embarrassing desires. Her settings — so permeable you feel their damp, decaying air — are described with a clarity that borders on the perverse. People are forever entering and exiting the scenes with a kind of tragicomic timing that adds tension and complexity. Make no mistake. There is no pause in this novel. It picks you up and shakes you good and spins you right-round like a record.

The narrator (Bradley) is as unlikeable as they come: a misogynist, delusional, self-righteous, self-absorbed, neurotic, infantile, priggish and yet at times, piercingly wise. There are also, according to Bradley, numerous competitors for his love. His ex-wife. His best friend’s wife. His best friend’s daughter. His ex-wife’s brother. Yet Bradley loves no one other than himself. An old bachelor, an “intellectual don Juan” (as he describes himself) he nurtures great aspirations to be a great writer. In fact, he’d rather write nothing at all than write anything that defies the absolute! Consequently, he is scornful of his best friend’s literary achievements, who is a prolific and immensely enjoyable novelist.

But the novel also has a deeper layer — a sharp criticism of criticism itself — infused with a delicious ridicule that pierces through pretentiousness. This it does by placing in an infinitely funny, affectionate match, Arnold Baffin (the popular novelist), with our elitist, presumptuous narrator, who says things like: “Art has its martyrs, not least those who have preserved their silence. There are saints of art who have simply waited mutely all their lives rather than profane the purity of a single page with anything less than what is perfectly appropriate and beautiful, that is to say, with anything less than what is true!”

Indeed, many writers — myself included — are drawn to criticism because we are, in essence, our harshest critics. Ever hungry for the validation of our self-appointed excellence. In this novel, Murdoch parodies these arrogant modes of thinking about writing, exposing the absurdity and often psychological insecurities that lurk beneath the show of intellectualism.

Ultimately, and where I think Murdoch is an unparalleled genius is in her characters. In writing flawed and funny characters, especially masochistic and narcissistic, she is remarkable. Most of them are upper middle-class clockwork figurines, and then she winds them up, and they rush here and shag, and rush there and theorise, after which they have some tea, and finally they shoot someone. It’s funny and exhausting and you often need to breathe.

This knowledge of the human psyche coupled with her painter’s eye for detail, renders scenes so complete, they almost leap off the page, unfolding like origami around you. From an eyebrow flicker to a stuffy self-important radio voice, her descriptions are imbued with a richness that makes the read as easy and beautiful as watching a first-class comedy. The only thing I can bring myself to criticise is the deep theorising in which the narrator occasionally dabbles — at times incomprehensible, at times simply annoying. But, of course, this too is part of his character.

To conclude sensibly, ‘The Black Prince’ is not only a sensational bomb of a book that I think everyone should read immediately, but it also holds a special place in my heart. When I first read it, three years ago, it changed everything I thought I knew about writing. It changed the kind of writer I wanted to become. All writers must decide this someday, as we decide the kind of people we want to be, and live according to that. It is not so hard, if one is endowed with a mind, time, and some acquired skill, to write intellectual, self-righteous novels, abundant in literary tricks. It is even easier to make these books fatally boring. Worthy, perhaps, but boring. Concurrently, it is not so hard to write popular novels at the cost of depth and style. What is hard (and worth the effort, as I see it) is to write a gripping, un-put-down-able book, with large quantities of pleasure (both intellectual and emotional).

To marry philosophy with literature, and drama, and the immense disaster of the human destiny, that I think is RARE. In the end, that is what Murdoch does, and what I hope to do someday very soon.