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Literature has a capacity for newness with each generation that is missing in
most other art forms (except perhaps music). A painting is 'new' only for the
generations that are present when it is created. Certainly everyone who is born
afterwards will get a chance to see it for the first time, but the original
painting by then has acquired the patina of an artifact, or a well-preserved
car. Add to that the fact that each reproduction of an art piece means its
impact is reduced – and can only be regained by viewing the original, partly
because a reproduction lacks the tactile quality of the original: Stand close to
an original painting or sculpture and you can see the physical residue of the
artist who created it. At that moment the viewer and the artist are separated
only by time. Think about this the next time you see an original painting up
close: you are now as close to this object as the creator once was and there, in
that ridged, topographical swirl is the hand of the painter.
Certainly there are books that are artifacts in the same manner; however, the
reproduction of a book does not diminish its impact, because writing is not
exclusively the transmission of what, or how, one sees, but what and how one
thinks. It is the transmission of the writer's mind, and as long as the words
remain the same, the distance between writer and reader is reduced in time. This
impact is even more significant when the book remains topically relevant despite
the passage of time. Such was the case for me upon reading G. by John
Berger.
Published in 1972, roughly a year after Berger's groundbreaking BBC television
series, and resulting book, Ways of Seeing, Berger's G. won The
Guardian fiction prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Booker
Prize. It is the story of Giovanni (simply called G. throughout the story), who
is the bastard son of an Italian merchant and a young American society
girl. Although G. is a Don Juan figure, the story is not directly about his
conquests, nor does it present a redemptive story arc where he goes from a
young, fickle lover to some form of romantic leading man. G. is a tragic figure,
caught up in the sudden quickening of history at the beginning of the Twentieth
Century, and although G. is present for a number of important events, he is
neither a major player in those events nor entirely aware of their impact.
Berger simply doesn't place G. at the events and follow him around; that would
be too simple and would defeat the intention he set out with. When G. is
present for the first flight over the Alps, a feat accomplished by Jorge Chavez
in 1910, Berger inter-cuts the story of G. and the young hotel maid, Leonie,
with Chavez's daring flight. The action creates a striking juxtaposition between
Chavez's historical isolation as he noses his flimsy monoplane over the Alps and
G.'s private isolation as he seduces Leonie – or, rather, as Leonie chooses to
be seduced by G. since she feels her life in her small village is
predetermined. She knows she will marry the man she is engaged to, she will quit
her job at the hotel, raise children and eventually die within the small
confines of her village. She views her time with G. as her one opportunity for
adventure, a chance to be someone similar to Chavez and the other aviators who
have gathered in Brig for this one tiny moment of history. She will have her
adventure within the confines of her body, the only thing that is truly hers.
So much of what Berger is trying to do in G. is baseed on ideas he
developed as an artist and art critic as well as a writer. During the
section I've just mentioned, Berger writes, "Never again will a single story be
told as though it were the only one." This line has stuck with me for a long
time and serves as a small key to what Berger has done in this novel.
Repeatedly, Berger intrudes on the narrative, what John Gardner would call the
"vivid and continuous dream" of the story, to include a theoretical, or
historical point, or even to comment upon the narrative structure of his own
story. At one point, Berger pulls back from the narrative action of a scene to
deliver a brief explanation of how women have been viewed in art, which I
realized was the first section of an essay from "Ways of Seeing." For most
writers, this would be almost impossible to do successfully, but Berger's
writing has a very simple quality that makes the interesting artistic concepts
he employs in the novel accessible to all readers. So, when Berger blends scenes
from G.'s life with scenes pulled from such events as the death of his aunt's
husband in the Boer war, a labor riot in Italy, or the first devastating battles
of World War I, we are purposefully pulled in two directions and made aware that
this is
not the only story of consequence. Such actions create a poignancy that feels
neither cheap or maudlin, but very real and honest, much contemporary fiction
fails to do.
Review by Jason Malott, Watermark employee since January 2005.
See what else he's reading at:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/jasonmalott.html
August 31, 2005
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