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A review by batbones
Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt
4.0
Byatt continues the quartet of a thoughtful, intellectual variety. The strength of her analysis and the breadth of her consideration of the intellectual trends/swings of the 50s-60s are deeply and charmingly proven to be more than just a way of description. Babel Tower is a survey of ideas prevalent and signature to the times, and also a exploration of a woman's life as it might be lived, caught within the interstices of changing and cementing opinion, both strands artfully woven together and mutually strengthened in a single narrative. The ideas, seeds of thought, free-floating as they are, in the rich chaos of life, anchor and bloom; and life sketched out is usefully, here 'use' meaning both literary and historical value, immersed in the rich, heady, bubbling broth of the visionary and new. Frederica, bibliophile, wordsmith, too clever for her own good perhaps, a woman 'who has done things', is aptly at the centre of this plentiful novel of ideas. In Babel Tower there is a yearning for change, an infectious but also perilous (this is my reading) idealism for new paradigms within which human society and interrelations can be conducted without the seeming shackles and despairs of the present on in which mankind (or those who read mankind as such) finds itself. It is a novel of insurrection, of turnings and consequently of rebellions and challenges of the very definitions by which humans define their humanity, their lives, and their fabric of civilisation. Criticism and theory as they are now understood are only freshly identified - the artist finds himself at the mercy of critical assumptions of psychoanalysis and marxism (some truths, some not?, Byatt is intelligently equivocal here) which run the risk of, on one hand, over-interpreting and twisting his work, and on the other, putting out the fire which so animates it and reducing it to flattened, abstruse, academic babble. There are institutions that also endure: marriage, adultery (the condition of divorce that seems so out-of-date to our modern minds), the desperate, fierce, inexplicable, tender and resisting and clutching, love of a mother for her child despite her admission that she is 'not motherly'.
Unlike the previous books of the quartet, the perspective shifts somewhat toward a narrower cast of characters, some newly introduced within this novel, with mixed effects. Frederica still is the central character, which is good, but Marcus's POV is almost eradicated altogether, which is such a shame since if the novel has a second most interesting character, it would be him and his mathematical dreams of the world. Him, intelligent but colourless, visionary but practically useless, exudes his own mystery and charm, despite the quartet's frequent physical descriptions to the contrary. I had hoped to see more of him following the nerve-wracking events of Virgin and later, Still Life, but the picture he is found in is rather shocking - he seems, for the lack of a better word, normal. There should be more to it, I think, more explaining that needs to be done of how he got from his strange world to such a stifling, uninteresting sense of uneventfulness. It was disappointing to have this expectation unfulfilled.
(On a completely related note John Ottokar and his codependent twin are such creeps and half the book was spent silently pleading with/screaming at Frederica to get as far away from them as she can. Which she did not; that almost destroyed the pleasure of reading. Frederica seems different here, too, and if the sudden predicament of marriage the reader finds her into are cogently explained, her impulsive decision-making founded upon bodily urges are immensely frustrating to read. Oh for someone so clever. More than once I wondered whether this novel was to become one of those nauseating ones about perfectly sensible people making terrible decisions just because they felt like it, and here I cannot quite condone it for such a mode would be a horrible mismatch to Frederica's formidable education. I thoroughly appreciated the thought experiment that was Babbletower, but there was really perhaps too much sex.)
On the other hand, Jude Mason was refreshingly intriguing, scruffily robed as a prophet, with fatalistic views on language. His book sparks off a lawsuit that meanders around and tries to put a chalk circle around muddy definitions of artistic merit and obscenity. A very intelligent and enjoyable section.
Unlike the previous books of the quartet, the perspective shifts somewhat toward a narrower cast of characters, some newly introduced within this novel, with mixed effects. Frederica still is the central character, which is good, but Marcus's POV is almost eradicated altogether, which is such a shame since if the novel has a second most interesting character, it would be him and his mathematical dreams of the world. Him, intelligent but colourless, visionary but practically useless, exudes his own mystery and charm, despite the quartet's frequent physical descriptions to the contrary. I had hoped to see more of him following the nerve-wracking events of Virgin and later, Still Life, but the picture he is found in is rather shocking - he seems, for the lack of a better word, normal. There should be more to it, I think, more explaining that needs to be done of how he got from his strange world to such a stifling, uninteresting sense of uneventfulness. It was disappointing to have this expectation unfulfilled.
(On a completely related note John Ottokar and his codependent twin are such creeps and half the book was spent silently pleading with/screaming at Frederica to get as far away from them as she can. Which she did not; that almost destroyed the pleasure of reading. Frederica seems different here, too, and if the sudden predicament of marriage the reader finds her into are cogently explained, her impulsive decision-making founded upon bodily urges are immensely frustrating to read. Oh for someone so clever. More than once I wondered whether this novel was to become one of those nauseating ones about perfectly sensible people making terrible decisions just because they felt like it, and here I cannot quite condone it for such a mode would be a horrible mismatch to Frederica's formidable education. I thoroughly appreciated the thought experiment that was Babbletower, but there was really perhaps too much sex.)
On the other hand, Jude Mason was refreshingly intriguing, scruffily robed as a prophet, with fatalistic views on language. His book sparks off a lawsuit that meanders around and tries to put a chalk circle around muddy definitions of artistic merit and obscenity. A very intelligent and enjoyable section.