Parade's End

[Nick Armstrong]

My thoughts exactly...I would join you and Anna in the engine-shed were I not afraid of spoiling your fun...(being a bit of an old buffer )

No, come in for a bit of a shunt !

This all relates back to a lurid passage of play early on in the history of AA.. ah! I've found it... back in March 2011.. http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...6403#post36403



I think it all stemmed from a train-spotting question, and my discovery that

Another of the "Prince of Wales" class locos was:

Caliban
Entered service 12 December 1915, withdrawn September 1936. Built by the North British Locomotive Co., LNWR No. 2392, LMS No. 5689

Ahem!

Interesting to see you took a similar view to mine on 'Parade's End'! I think I may try and see it a second time, now I know what to expect. I wonder how much of my reaction was due to not knowing what to expect, and whether viewing it knowing that one's in for a rather cruel modernist gallery of grotesques will make the reaction different. (Won't improve the sound though - I've read a number of other comments about that)

[antongould]

But Rumpole it had your boy Roger Allam in!

[Nick Armstrong]

But Rumpole it had your boy Roger Allam in!

But not used enough! and again, that slightly Carroll-esque weird whimsical humour as he had to get out of the little car in the fog in full G&S military regalia.... Just not quite my cup of tea, first time anyhow...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yes grotesques i think .... the endings of a time and society ...so no heroes ... or rather no heroic perspectives just lots of them .... and everything fails ... we are in for a hard time i gather ... and gripping

[vinteuil]

... those who seek immediate clarity will not be satisfied by Ford Madox Ford. In the Julian Barnes intro flagged up earlier, one particularly good para is :

"Nor is it just mind, memory and fact that are slipping and sliding; it is the very language used to describe them. General Campion, one of the least hysterical of characters, is driven to wonder, "What the hell is language for? We go round and round."
The narrative also goes round and round, backtracking and criss-crossing. A fact, or an opinion, or a memory will be dropped in, and often not explained for a dozen or a hundred pages. Sometimes this may be a traditional cliffhanger: a character left in a state of emotional crisis while the novel ducks off for 50 or 60 pages at the western front. More often, the device becomes something much more individual and Fordian. An explosive piece of information, murderous lie or raging emotional conclusion might casually be let drop, whereupon the narrative will back off, as if shocked by anything stated with such certainty, then circle around, come close again, back off again, and finally, approach it directly. The narrative, in other words, is acting as the mind often works. This can confuse, but as VS Pritchett said of Ford, "Confusion was the mainspring of his art as a novelist. He confused to make clear." To say that a great novel needs reading with great attention is somewhere between a banality and an insult. But it applies particularly to Parade's End. It will be a very rare reader who does not intermittently look up from the page to ask: "But did I know that? Have we been told that already or not?" In what sense did Christopher "kill" his father? Did we know that Mrs Macmaster was even pregnant, let alone that she had lost a child? Have we been told Tietjens is under arrest? That his stepmother died of grief when Sylvia left him? That Macmaster was dead? Has Mark really been struck dumb? And so on, confusingly and clarifyingly, to the very end."

[vinteuil]

But not used enough! and again, that slightly Carroll-esque weird whimsical humour as he had to get out of the little car in the fog in full G&S military regalia.... Just not quite my cup of tea, first time anyhow...

... but this is totally faithful to the book:

"A small, closed car with crumpled mud guards, noiseless nearly, gleaming black... God curse it, it passed them, stopped ten yards down... the horse rearing back: mad! Clean mad... something like a scarlet and white cockatoo, fluttering out of the small car door... a general. In full tog. White feathers! Ninety medals! Scarlet coat! Black trousers with red stripe. Spurs too, by God!"

[p 141 of the old Penguin edn.]

[Nick Armstrong]

... but this is totally faithful to the book:

"A small, closed car with crumpled mud guards, noiseless nearly, gleaming black... God curse it, it passed them, stopped ten yards down... the horse rearing back: mad! Clean mad... something like a scarlet and white cockatoo, fluttering out of the small car door... a general. In full tog. White feathers! Ninety medals! Scarlet coat! Black trousers with red stripe. Spurs too, by God!"

[p 141 of the old Penguin edn.]

Oh absolutely - it's just that it's an absurdist vision I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable with. I imagine Rufus Sewell's deranged obsessive Rev Duchemin is also straight out of the book?

I think it's that the lurches into that sort of absurd or modern Gothic humour are somehow inconsistent with other more naturalistic sections. It's the sort of erratic mish-mash of style and tone that I find uncomfortable.

Perhaps the TV adaptation makes this more difficult - because the production looks so real and naturalistic (best TV period style, à la Downton), the grostequerie, the caricatures, the absurdity all jar, for me.

I'm puzzled why this should be - after all, Dickens peoples his stories with such absurdities... but it doesn't trouble me, quite the opposite - I relish it, both to read and to see in a good adaptation.

Puzzled - that best sums up my current position!

[french frank]

... those who seek immediate clarity will not be satisfied by Ford Madox Ford. In the Julian Barnes intro flagged up earlier, one particularly good para is : ...

Found this recent blog while looking for something on the 'unreliable narrator'. A very novelistic approach which perhaps is more puzzling in a television adaptation.

[vinteuil]

Puzzled - that best sums up my current position!

"puzzled" is a good, healthy, Fordian response to any Ford novel

I suspect the best way forward is to read the damn thing. Mme V has just invested in her own copy, and is desperately trying to catch up - I have a 300 page advance on her...

[Nick Armstrong]

"puzzled" is a good, healthy, Fordian response to any Ford novel

I suspect the best way forward is to read the damn thing. Mme V has just invested in her own copy, and is desperately trying to catch up - I have a 300 page advance on her...

Would it be taken ill if I were to admit that I had a thought for the Vinteuil ménage as I watched the scene where Tietjens says "The world ended long ago, in the 18th century" and then finds a plate hurled in his direction with the harangue from Madame about him 'correcting the encyclopedia' and that 'no jury would convict her if she had killed him'....?

[vinteuil]

Would it be taken ill if I were to admit that I had a thought for the Vinteuil ménage as I watched the scene where Tietjens says "The world ended long ago, in the 18th century" and then finds a plate hurled in his direction with the harangue from Madame about him 'correcting the encyclopedia' and about 'no jury convicting her if she had killed him'....?

... it would not be taken ill. We both chortled at certain similarities. Mme V has so far refrained from hurling crockery; I have been known to correct the Encyclopædia Britannica



[and "The world ended long ago, in the 18th century" is practically a mantra here... ]

[Nick Armstrong]

... it would not be taken ill. We both chortled at certain similarities. Mme V has so far refrained from hurling crockery; I have been known to correct the Encyclopædia Britannica

I guessed as much!


BTW: what is the "Hullo Central" phrase about? Does it refer to a person, and if so, who?

[vinteuil]

BTW: what is the "Hullo Central" phrase about? Does it refer to a person, and if so, who?

Hullo Central is Sylvia's maid :

" I call my maid Hullo Central because she's got a tinny voice like a telephone. I say: 'Hullo Central' - when she answers, 'Yes, modd'm', you'd swear it was the Exchange speaking... "

[Northender]

Hullo Central is Sylvia's maid :

" I call my maid Hullo Central because she's got a tinny voice like a telephone. I say: 'Hullo Central' - when she answers, 'Yes, modd'm', you'd swear it was the Exchange speaking... "

Thank you - one less thing to puzzle over!

[Nick Armstrong]

Thank you - one less thing to puzzle over!

(Explained in the book, vindepays? But not in the adaptation... )