But here we are nowhere, unrelated to day or our mother
Earth in love or in hate; our occupation
Leaves no trace on this or each other who do not
Meet in its mere enclosure but are
As object for speculation …
(W. H. Auden, Air Port)
Viola: What country, friends, is this?
Captain: This is Illyria, lady.
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
Here in the airport lounge, how becalmed we voyagers are, all spellbound and dreambound! How equable this climate – this mild, well-regulated air, untouched by frost or torrid heat, or the bite of chilling wind! Suspended between Somewhere and Elsewhere, we bask in the light of Anywhere. It is a place where fantasies luxuriate. As our feet wander the mute and carpeted acres, our eyes flit speculatively among figures and faces. Look, now, at this man coming towards us. His neat blue suit proclaims the businessman, but who knows what underworlds of espionage, what services in a secret cause are implicated in that briefcase? Those policemen at the boarding gate are tensely waiting for the two drug-trafficking mafiosi to show up. That woman’s elegance, ever so slightly ruffled – for her silk scarf hangs negligently, and she has just dropped a glove – tells us that she is on her way to meet her lover, the American neurosurgeon, who will never marry her as long as his demented wife (of whom she has no knowledge) still lingers on in the expensive Swiss clinic. Here we all are, in this Land of In-Between. We are characters in enjoyably bad books, it seems. We are in the right place for Popular Fiction.
And there in the corner is the very emblem of our condition – the airport bookstall, stacked with magazines and paperbacks to keep us happy and hypnotized in our confinement. The covers are gaudy with all the emblems and personalities of the dream-world. Here a pale face framed in a nurse’s cap is bedewed with one bright tear; here a lady of phenomenal endowment sustains a gown that seems about to abandon’ her completely; here a gentleman whose face appears to have been fashioned out of lacquered aluminium, so smooth it is and so symmetrical, holds in crossed hands a red, red rose and a big black pistol; here the Totenkopf and other Nazi paraphernalia – or perhaps the hammer and sickle and the insignia of the KGB – are suspended above the heroic heads of a United States naval officer and a redhead in a tight white blouse; here is a cowboy, with ten-gallon hat and leather chaps; here is a space-trekking crewman in his galactic dungarees. There is stuff here to sustain us during our flight; and when we have emerged into the weathers of our destinations and the happenings of ordinary lives, we can always leave the book of our choice in some hotel room, to beguile another traveller.
For this is one of the principal characteristics of popular fiction – its disposability. You may buy Conrad or Henry James or Fielding in paperback, but you are hardly likely to leave them intentionally in a bedroom or on a luggage rack, because they have served their turn and have nothing left to offer you. Such authors are resources on which we repeatedly draw, and when we buy one of their books we take some care to keep it by us. Popfiction, on the other hand (let us call it that for convenience’ sake) has little to offer after the first absorbed reading. We do not want again, though we may want more. To one classic book we may well return times without number; our return to popfiction consists of buying more popfiction. It is well known that popfiction is marketed by the tens of thousands, whereas fiction of more elevated pretensions sells at best by the thousand and sometimes by the mere hundred. The phrase ‘best seller’ points to the importance of commercial success as a popular measure of value. Between the publisher and the consumer there is a tacit agreement that if a book is good it is bound to be a best seller, and if it is a best seller it is bound to be good. And as Viscount Melbourne said in quite another context, no damned merit in it.
Of course it depends what you mean by merit. Popfiction does have its merits, and they are by no means negligible. They are shown in the ability to tell a tale, to devise its episodes with such skill that the reader often cannot bear to put the book aside, to touch on common sympathies, to understand the judgements and desires of ordinary people, to offer the keen experience of danger, of anxiety, of love, of sorrow, of triumph, but all without the intruding shadow of the actual, without obliging us to quit the Illyrian trance, so to speak, or the hermetic fold of the airport lounge. To do all this takes talent, and the money we pay for our distraction is fairly earned; we are ill-natured, and doubtless ill-informed, if we despise the arts that easily divert us.
Our deeper allegiance, nevertheless, is to a very special kind of ‘merit’, which we detect in the capacity of a book to illuminate our own experience, to enlarge our perceptions of human nature and conduct, and, without overt moralizing, to establish and confirm in us the knowledge of a morality. The lessons of ‘serious’ literature are not quickly learned. Our relationship with a book, our understanding of its themes, our view of its characters, can accrue and change over a period of many years. This is why we hold on to texts we recognize as classics, or as classic in potential. Popfiction, the disposable article, is committed to the simplest moralities, the crudest psychologies, and has few philosophical pretensions. It does not ask for careful reading or repeated reading; nor do rereadings change our understanding of its nature, our perceptions of the message it has to convey; its peculiar claim on our attentions is, in fact, that it can be quickly read and almost as quickly forgotten.
And why are we so quick about it? The source of our facility can be identified in a simple term: convention. We read the conventions of popular narrative like a map, a crude map that designates a route and a few easily recognizable landmarks. All narratives employ conventions, it is true, but there are degrees of complexity, of diversity, of originality in the management of conventional elements. If the ‘maps’ of novels by Graham Greene or L. P. Hartley or Iris Murdoch seem to present subtler apprehensions of the terrain than anything by Ian Fleming or Frederick Forsyth or Barbara Cartland, it is not because they employ different conventions. It is rather the case that in pop-fiction the conventions are simplified and more or less fixed, whereas in writing of more advanced pretension the conventional game is free, diverse, endlessly modified; so that even when such writings draw on some traditional form such as the moral fable, they may still succeed in handling convention unconventionally. All this has one striking consequence: that while we cannot easily predict the ramifications of ‘non-popular’ narratives, popfiction is nothing if not predictable. And so we read it quickly – moving rapidly through the landscape, as it were, little but the road.
The predictabilities of situation and style figure most obviously in two genres or subspecies of popfiction: the romantic story, as published in women’s magazines and some widely-marketed paperbacks, and the male-orientated ‘thriller’, the action-packed chronicle of supermanly heroes and hyperdiabolical villains. As to the first of these two categories, there is probably no species of fiction that can be read more quickly, with greater assurance to the reader of being steered in the right direction – no missed signals – no blind roads or wrong turnings – or with less compulsion to renew acquaintance in a second reading. In general, these tales present a view of women so demeaning (though unintentionally) that it must be acceptable only in what might be called the Illyrian sense: it has to be allowed for the time being by anyone who wants to make something of the story. It is this very acceptance that creates the conditions for fast and unburdened reading; and what the reader must swallow or sanction is an idea of true womanliness, a notion of femininity.
The essence of this notion is its recognition – clever, winning, anxious, but always submissive – of its role, to make a marriage and a home. Homecoming, literal or figurative, is the magazine writer’s greatest good, and the proper end of most romantic narratives. Jill finally nestles into the protective arms of Jack, her eyes full of happy tears, her head full of wallpaper patterns. She has come Home; and home is where she will henceforth remain, though that prospect lies beyond the terminus of the tale. There are of course illimitable variations on the theme that all roads lead to Home, but the variations are based on some elementary scenarios, readily compounded by a blending of types. Readers of women’s magazines will possibly recognize the following sketches, fictive instances of fictional themes:
Sketch 1: Jill is a secretary/a nurse/a teacher-governess. She is dedicated to her work, attractively turned out, nourishes sound moral instincts, and knows her place. Although she resists the impulse, feeling in every fibre of her being that he is not for her, she is deeply drawn to her employer, Sebastian/Alex/Greg, a consultant surgeon/company director/eminent publisher. Yet he is so impatient and brusque with her, finding fault with her every action and seeming to have eyes only for Gisela, a fashion model/stage star/voluptuous portrait painter/exclusive literary agent. Then one day, to her surprise, he invites her to his apartment/estate in Berkshire/son’s School Sports, and while they are alone in the library/knot garden/refreshment marquee he tries to kiss her. Stunned, she repulses him, thinking of Gisela …
Sketch 2: Jill is married to Jason, an accountant with good prospects. Their marriage ought to be idyllic, and yet … why does Jill feel so unfulfilled? Why are breakfast times not the carefree, bantering, tender, laughter-filled occasions they used to be? Why is Jason spending more and more time at work? And why does he so often call her, when his favourite dinner is in the oven, pleading delays at the office? One Saturday morning, as she is rummaging through the pockets of his dinner-jacket before sending it to the dry-cleaners, she finds a perfumed note from someone called Chantal. It is addressed to Jason. She can only feel that this must be a woman. Though she resists the impulse with every fibre of her being, she at length resolves to discover the truth and if need be confront Jason with it, even at the risk of destroying their marriage. One night when Jason goes out to a business appointment, she follows him from the house …
Sketch 3: Jill is a career woman, successful in her own right as a designer of lingerie for the American market. She drives a custom-built Morgan two-seater, and her dark hair falls softly over her pale oval face. Her husband, Piers, a brilliant but mildly crippled concert pianist, is moody and aggressive – brooding, she guesses, over her dazzling success in the rough-and-tumble of the garment business, comparing it with the falling attendance at his Beethoven recitals. Things are going badly between them. If only they could have had children it might have been different. Again and again she begs him to discuss their situation openly … but he takes refuge in stormy attacks on the keyboard, sometimes going on deep into the night. Jill, though resisting the impulse with every fibre of her being, feels that the time has come for her to leave Piers. One evening, while he is hunched over the Diabelli Variations, she packs a valise and slips behind the wheel of the Morgan …
These stories represent three primary patterns of Home-coming. (There are more, no doubt.) In type 1, woman seeks Home, reaching it after various adventures in misunderstanding. In type 2, woman defends the integrity of Home when it appears to be threatened by a rival, or possibly by her own impercipience. In type 3, she herself is on the point of leaving Home. Jill seeks, Jill holds, Jill abandons. Of course type 3 Jill will not be allowed (unless the magazine is rather advanced in its editorial views) to complete her scheme of abandonment. There will always be some turning point – a chance encounter, an accident, counsel from a sad stranger, a telephone call – to bring the runagate to her senses. Like the other Jills, she is tied to Home, and Home will claim her, comfort her, and confer upon her the only identity she is capable of sustaining. Her plot, in the meantime, may allow a diversity of choices; she may decide to leave Jack/Piers because their marriage has lost its meaning, or because there is an exciting new opening for her at the Los Angeles office, or because Antoine has invited her to his villa in Cannes – where, after a perfect meal under the Mediterranean stars, he will invite her to spend the night with him and she will realize how much she loves Jack/Piers.
In each narrative type there are numberless variations of incident, which, however, always conform to the simple principles that guide us through the narrative. We accompany the heroine on her journey Home, and we move through stages of the False Perception, the Revised Perception, and the Clarifying Act. The significance of the False Perception is that Jill in some way misinterprets her relationship with Jack; she supposes that he must be indifferent to her, or that she dislikes him, or that he is so dull in comparison with stylish Jeremy. With the Revised Perception comes the happy recognition that Jack is her man, that he is attracted to her, that he is vibrantly exciting, besides being utterly honest and reliable. (Unlike Jeremy, who only wants her body.) All that is then needed is the Clarifying Act, which may be something as simple as a bunch of red roses, or something as complicated as Jill’s struggles to save Jack’s racehorses from the blazing stables. The management of the scheme allows for all sorts of twists and complications – there may be repeated false perceptions and revisions of perception – but this, basically, is the path we predict.
Our expectations inevitably include an image of the heroine. We will anticipate – particularly if she is involved in a Sketch 1 plot – that like all her kind, from Jane Eyre onwards, she is upwardly mobile, an ordinary girl about to attract the attention of a man of distinction and worldly assets. In the case of magazine fiction, this anticipation possibly reflects an assessment of the social status, the pretensions, the decent day-dreams of the readership. It is apparent, at all events, that Jill habitually looks for a man with prospects, a good provider with some standing in the community. To be fit for such a mate, she herself must be capable and talented, combining a flair for dress and domestic economy with outstanding abilities as the organizer of an office, an operating theatre, a sales division, a library. Indeed, her claims to competence and spirited independence in a man’s world often create the tensions of her particular case. The Career is the arch-rival of the ultimate good, Home. The lures of Career must never be allowed to take precedence over the claims of Home, but at the same time Jill’s performance in her Career must indicate a personality of some substance and capacity. Her abilities and attainments in her own sphere may equal those of her man (a kind of occupational apartheid sometimes operates) but she must not outdo him. On the whole, if Home is to have its due, the magazine heroine must be highly competent in an occupation she will be prepared to forsake at need; let her be a junior solicitor, by all means, but beware of making her an eminent counsel (even Portia retired after only one dramatically successful case); let her be a ward sister, or more probably a staff nurse, but think twice before endowing her with a fellowship and a flourishing Harley Street practice; let her run the office with indispensable efficiency, but do not give her a seat on the board. In magazine stories, and in romantic fiction generally, the woman who elevates Career above Home puts her personal happiness at risk, and can even be morally reprehensible. (The TV soap opera, Dynasty, offers a typical example: virtuous Krystle is dedicated to the task of making a Home for her man, the silver-haired tycoon, whereas malign Alexis, the stock ‘rich bitch’ of the American scene, is an unhappy, restless power-broker, incapable of stable relationships, and therefore not only in permanent exile from Home, but also a threat to the very concept.)
It follows, naturally, that this capable woman must be attractive. This is the word most frequently used to describe her physical appeal; not so often ‘pretty’ (suggesting immaturity, uncertainty, helplessness), or ‘beautiful’ (a dubious word, with occasional connotations of speciousness, falsehood, even danger), but very commonly attractive, meaning wholesome, well-groomed, having regular features, a trim figure, a decent complement of teeth, full red lips, and a face which may be oval, heart-shaped, high-cheekboned, ‘interesting’, but never round, square, or pasty. The magazine illustrations supply the protocol of pulchritude: a vision of woman from the waist upwards, based on perfect symmetry of feature. Poised symmetrically with her is her symmetrical mate, he whose hairline cannot recede, whose jaw has immaculate definition, whose ears, discreetly proportioned and tastefully whorled, lie close to his skull, whose nose runs true, whose eyebrows are well-aligned, whose tie is becomingly knotted and lies in direct descent from his Adam’s apple and the roguish cleft in his chin. The hero cannot be otherwise; can we imagine a romantic tale in which the leading man is an obese plumber? A costing clerk with flat feet? A wheezing, maladroit turf accountant who is forced to hide in the stair cupboard every time the doorbell rings? Such men may be welcome in other fictional locations, but they are not habitués of the romantic Home.
Nor indeed is there much of a place for them in the Great Outdoors of the thriller: on the bald and perilous moor, in the sunken liner’s bullion room, in the abandoned mine, on the high girders, in the smoky back office, behind the wheel of the Lamborghini, astride the stallion or the Harley Davidson, in the various locations of crisis where a man must be ready to fire the gun, throw the punch, kick away the knife, play for time, fling himself sideways, dive off the cliff. The heroes of thrillers are a versatile breed; yet, like the heroines of magazine fiction, they act under the limitation of rival principles. Jill is caught between Career and Home; Jack is held between Self and Organization. In the Self, the thriller hero enacts his reader’s gross fantasies of danger and devilry, pursuing his charmed career from one violent crisis to another, leaving behind him a trail of broken bottles, cracked crowns, grateful blondes, and defunct bullies, not to mention the wreckage of much valuable property in the form of aircraft, boats, cars, houses, industrial plant, and highly secret underground germ warfare installations. But all this might bring upon him charges of unbridled criminality and gross moral turpitude, were he not under the restraint of the Organization that sanctions his excesses.
All true heroes belong to some Organization, in the name of which they act. It may be the police force, or the regiment, or the secret service, or more generally some community of people with the right stuff in them, the good g...
