Just read an an interesting article by Martin Amis, where he posits that:
When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less.
He makes some valid points – it’s hard, even for ardent admirers of a particular author, to argue that every work is of equal standing, and there’s something slightly false, I suppose, about insisting that we judge Shakespeare only on the standard of his very greatest plays. But I’m not sure that Amis’s point isn’t somewhat of an oversimplification – granted one cannot love every work equally, but being able to rank them according to their quality does not been cutting the less loved adrift simply because others are more perfect. I think that Amis’s ‘The Rachel Papers’ is a terrific book – the fact that ‘Money’ is much better does not prevent me loving both.
(That said, I decidedy don’t love ‘Night Train’, ‘Yellow Dog’ or ‘The Information’, – few do – so perhaps Amis’ conceit is self-serving. It would certainly provide a happy explanation as to why so few people profess to like only 50% of his backlist – rather than admitting to an observable decline in quality only partially remedied by ‘The Pregnant Widow’. I’m being mean – Amis is wonderful).
Good writing is not a race, anyway, and there are no winners or losers, unless you care who wins the Booker prize. Nevertheless, for me Amis does get a couple of things right – not all Don DeLillo’s stuff is as good as ‘White Noise’ or ‘Libra’ (‘Underworld’ certainly isn’t – bravura opening apart what a chore that book was, for all the hype) and ‘Middlemarch’, despite being Eliot’s only great book, is indeed the central Anglophone novel – certainly the one I judge all others against. We part, however, Martin and I, over Jane Austen; not in the sense that we don’t both love her, but in that he attributes flaws to ‘Persuasion’ – which is madness, and that’s the end of it.
Talking of classics, It’s such a long time since I read ‘Wuthering Heights’ that my memories of it are somewhat hazy, and I suspect not entirely to be trusted – I was an ardent admirer as a young teenager of ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’, which gives some indication of my tastes. I remember liking Bronte’s book very much at the time, although I didn’t react as strongly as many of my peers – and like most I felt conflicted about Heathcliff without actually finding it very difficult to hate him.
Andrea Arnold’s new film adaptation of WH, starring Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave, aims to put that right by centring on Heathcliff’s perspective, reframing his behaviour in light of nature vs. nurture, and rendering his actions explicable in that context. It’s beautifully shot in 16mm (and framed in 4:3) and the first half was absolutely bewitching.
For all that Arnold (who previously directed the remarkable Red Road and lovely Fish Tank) is thought of as an art-house director, she has made a very unpretentious Wuthering Heights (far less self conscious than Jane Campion’s Keats flick, Bright Star) which makes full use of the dank, dark Yorkshire moors. It only fails, sadly, when she hands over to adult leads, asking James Howson and Kaya Scodelario to cary the final third having done precious little to establish a sympathetic relationship with the audience (meaning that the empathy which Glave earned as a troubled, far-from-home Heathcliff is largely squandered). It’s a shame that a film so visually arresting and beautifully mapped should fall apart on the back of a very odd decision (to replace two actors in their late teens with two in their early 20s), and instructive to note that even a plot as violently emotional as Wuthering Heights turns mawkish when you don’t have a feel for the characters.
Again, this is strictly a criticism of the last third – the scenes featuring the younger actors were hugely involving, but in Howson and Scodelario’s scenes I was reminded of the interminable yelling-into-the-wind scenes which blighted another recent big screen period drama – Anh Hung Tran’s emo take on Murakami’s Norweigan Wood. A shame – but not one which, ultimately, subtracts too much from the film; by the time the actors hand over you’ve already seen a brilliant production and, seeing as Arnold made the decision to only film 50% of the novel, I see no reason why I can’t draw a veil over a slightly underwhelming ending. If Amis is only taking 50% of Austen, I can take 50% of this.
Arnold is a very special director, and at the very least, she’s made me want to re-read Wuthering Heights, and re-assess Heathcliff, that old and compelling enigma.
