Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990)

You don't read LD for the plot or the complicated story line. Its all about character and his command of the English language and use of English words that are no longer part of the American idiom.
20 or so years of Felix Charlock's life are spent in thee pages. What read somewhat like a Paris Hemingway novel transposed to Athens with Brits and Greeks evolved into the navel gazing of the scientists life for "The Firm" and a very poor marriage. He finally is disgusted enough to leave and engage with his teenage son but this leaves to a failed assassination attempt that takes the life of his son. Interesting but not uplifting. LD has other better books.… (mer)

As we gradually realise the scope of Durrell's literary experiment, in this, the third of the Alexandria novels, it becomes clear how no one human can ever truly know any other human, and it's heartbreaking. Durrell's prose is often too rich, veering into a purple so rich Caesar wouldn't wear it, but for every shot that misses, three hit their mark. Mountolive's drive through the storm is rivaled for beauty only by the dust-storm sequence in "Justine", and the final chapter is a slow, pulsing, vivid depiction of the last moments before death. I'll probably give myself a few weeks to cleanse the palate before reading the final volume in the series, but I'm a Durrell convert for life, I can tell.… (mer)

How do you review, how do you qualify, how do you classify an experience like "Justine"? It's my introduction to Durrell as a writer, and a turning point in my adventures in literature.

Durrell feverishly and uncompromisingly explores the inner-workings of his half-dozen lead characters, filtered through the locational limitations of their chosen city - Alexandria - and describes how each person is constantly fettered by their own past, but also their social and societal contexts, their fears and self-doubts, and their attempts at interaction. It would be easy simply to quote endless snippets of Durrell's writing here, to explain his genius. But this seems useless. Read the book yourself instead.

It's an exhausting experience, this much is true. Emotionally, linguistically, even - in some unusual way - physically. At the same time, this snappy (200 page) book never feels dense. Despite his closely-textured style, the reader can race through this experience, never feeling daunted by the words at hand.

Are there parts of Durrell and his style that I question? Certainly. Women, homosexuals, children, people of different colours and religions... they're all given equal weight as characters, certainly, but sometimes they're more easily defined by their different element. (Durrell's feelings on sex and love are complex, but at times it seems like he sees gay men as simply horny men who have forsaken love for the easier - but undoubtedly loveless - sexual interaction that comes with men. And his characters constantly referring to children as "it" annoys me, even though I accept it was a commonplace of the era.) One could also ask questions about his interactions with the lower classes. Durrell's Alexandria pulses with life, this is true, and his descriptive passages are viscerally evocative. However, his characters rarely engage with work or real life; they seem instead to drift through at their own pace. Perhaps this is being too specific - after all, why should the novel focus on the narrator's teaching career when it is exploring his relationship with Justine? Or perhaps it is being churlish - by the inverse token, "Les Miserables" doesn't feature many sympathetic or realistically-drawn rich people: that would be against its mandate! So, I'll let it slide.

Durrell can be a challenging read for someone of my generation. First, much of his speech and use of words is archaic (when was the last time anyone used "terrible" to mean anything other than "of poor quality"?). Second, he had me running for the dictionary sometimes as much as four times in one sentence! (Not that I'd ever complain about learning new words or being challenged, it just unnerves me as someone who has always prided myself on my vocabulary). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, he comes from a very different generation and - more importantly - was writing for people like himself: upper-middle-class folk who has plenty of leisure time, who had undoubtedly travelled Europe and/or Northern Africa, who had at least a workable knowledge of three or four Romance languages, and who had a thorough knowledge of mythological, literary, and cultural references. It struck me the other day, while reading "Justine" on the train, that our society has segregated far more of late. The middle class no longer have this knowledge; it is reserved only for the few who develop a passion for it, and the few who are born to it. I almost fit that bill, so I was less challenged than many readers may be, but it's certainly clear that Durrell's target audience no longer exists, and that these books - written a scant 55 years ago - will need to be quite exhaustively annotated for future generations, if they are to remain in the public eye at all.

"Justine" still has much to offer. Its depictions of Alexandria, oozing sweat and life and dust. The broken reminiscences of the narrator, attempting to reconcile his notions of love and sex with his experiences of same. The fascinating complexities of Nessim and Melissa, of Scobie and Clea, even of the seemingly one-note Capodistria. And, of course, the eponymous portrait. I'm assuming that that fractured portraiture is Durrell's ultimate endgame, as I will discover when I read the remainder of the Alexandria Quartet. Justine is seen refracted through so many pairs of eyes in this novel, and each heart, each mind teases out different pieces of information. None of them are wrong, per se, but none of them are absolutely right. Durrell is asking us to consider which parts of a person's dimensions are truly the essence of themselves. After all, we all wear so many masks in life that these elements threaten to overtake, and, of course, we are many different - yet truthful - things to many different people. Beyond this, we evolve and change with each experience in life. And finally, there is the fact that sometimes our minds do hold breathtaking contradictions, some that we cannot quite understand ourselves.

For such a messy question, Durrell has found quite an elegant attempt at an answer.… (mer)

What is Balthazar? It is certainly impossible to read without first devouring its 'sibling' [b:Justine|13037|Justine (The Alexandria Quartet #1)|Lawrence Durrell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428544115l/13037._SY75_.jpg|45387]. The entire concept is that Balthazar - a supporting character from that book - read that book (the narrator Darley's memoirs) and is offering an annotation of them from a different point-of-view.

You could perhaps describe this book as a story about character, not plot, but that would be deceptive: the characters are the plot. The journeys they make, the changes of motivation and destination, the doubts and fears and sudden spasms of fate that occur, the small moments when their minds realise something heretofore unknown... those are what progress these books along.

In some ways, now that I'm accustomed to Durrell's style, I enjoy it more. Outwardly, he's pretentious - tossing in some French, Latin, Greek and just expecting you to understand it, making a discreet reference to a classic text or a philosophical doctrine in ways that are beyond mere literary references - but the fact is, he's not. Because, there's no pretense. This is genuinely who Durrell is and how he thinks. While one feels like he wrote this novel exclusively for the educated exiles from England of his era, it has a democratic way of looking at people that fits in with the American novels of earlier in that same century.

I can't wait to read [b:Mountolive|126710|Mountolive (The Alexandria Quartet #3)|Lawrence Durrell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347909368l/126710._SX50_.jpg|1849754] and [b:Clea|13039|Clea (The Alexandria Quartet #4)|Lawrence Durrell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440271623l/13039._SY75_.jpg|841968] now. The richly drawn characters of the first two books now exist in my memories like real people - loquacious Pombal, perverted and broken Scobie, pathetic Melissa, desperate Narouz, ethereal (yet somehow earthy) Clea, feeble Darley, bitter Pursewarden, rigid Nessim, sly Balthazar, charismatic Mountolive (as yet still reasonably underdeveloped) and of course the endlessly fascinating Justine. It is a testament to Durrell's skill that in two reasonably slim books, he has sketched not only these vast characters but the great and nuanced topography of their city, their Alexandria. Brilliant stuff.… (mer)