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Title: Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0-393-32117-7 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A twin study of Horatio Nelson and Nelson obsession
Comment: Losing Nelson is a brilliant book about a man trying to write a book about Horatio Nelson. The main character, Charles Cleasby, is a nebbish and a Nelson nerd, who, ever since beginning to specialize in Nelson on the recommendation of his psychiatrist, has no life beyond this obsession. He reenacts Nelson's battles, in real time and on their anniversaries, in a special room in his house; attends the Nelson Club, where he eventually gives a disastrous paper; and, most important, is trying to write a biography of Nelson. In it he hopes to prove his own firm conviction that Nelson was a perfect hero, a bright angel, who never did anything that was less than heroic, at least at sea. Cleasby is troubled by two things, one human and one historical. The human being is his typist, Miss Lily, who asks unsettling questions about Nelson's megalomania, his indifference to the sufferings of his men, his craving for celebrity; the other is a historical event, Nelson's apparent collusion in the betrayal of some Jacobin rebels in Naples, who left their fortresses under a promise of safe conduct but were arrested and executed. Cleasby hopes to "clear" Nelson of guilt in this case.
His efforts to do this lead him further and further into the byways of his obsession, which, having started out looking like a hobby, becomes more and more a kind of derangement. Eventually he is drawn into the "poisonous flower-trap" of Naples himself, with surprising results.
Unsworth is a fine historical novelist and one learns a lot about Nelson from reading this book; more interestingly one learns about the results on the fragile psyche of a Nelson fan (in his own mind, a double) of losing Nelson as a shining model of English perfection.
Merritt Moseley
Rating: 4
Summary: Haunting, Harrowing Hero-Razing
Comment: As has widely been observed, Barry Unsworth's intelligent novel succeeds at many levels. Let us specify a few: it is, first of all, a disturbing tale of obsession - Charles Cleasby's maniacal pursuit of evidence to exonerate Admiral Horatio Nelson of any malfeasance in what history has recorded as Nelson's distinctly unheroic behavior in Naples in 1798.
Unsworth has also written a subversive work of biographical art - the author notes in interviews that Losing Nelson in fact began its life as a commissioned biography of the supreme British hero. With vigorous economy Unsworth covers the main biographical bases and provides the reader, almost miraculously, with both sides of the interpretation with which Cleasby and all Nelsonographers must grapple. (Indeed, more plentiful source citations would have been helpful, although Unsworth does a nice job of working some of his documentation into the narrative - several times causing me to smile and shake my head in admiration at his cleverness in doing so.)
The book also works as a complexly interwoven meditation on the related themes of fame, heroism, nobility, patriotism, and virtuousness - again, from both sides, but adding another familiar dimension to Unsworth's "angel-of-light" and "angel-of-darkness" considerations, recalling the two sides of Henry V - the unabashedly jingoistic view of Prince Hal (Nelson) versus the play's pragmatic Falstaffian overtones that probe unsettlingly into "what IS honor?" This is a most timely aspect of the book: each era creates its own heroes - think of what we lionize as "heroic" and those whom we call "hero" - and Unsworth is as careful in presenting the building blocks of Nelson's fame as he is unsparing in dissecting the dynamic (for it IS a process) of heroism and its perpetuation.
Losing Nelson is also a modernist (not postmodern) psychological narrative of considerable virtuosity. Unsworth handles his twin-track materials with breathtaking seamlessness, sometimes moving incrementally through segues from Cleasby to Nelson (almost like the walking Henry Hull changing into the Werewolf of London as he passes behind successive pillars) and sometimes back and forth inside Cleasby-Nelson. One finishes some passages of this book simply to sit back in startled wonder: "how did he manage THAT?" Unsworth is a flawless craftsman, a master of pacing (the true narrative art) who knows when to divulge a tidbit of information and when to withhold. And he never cheats the reader.
Sprinkled throughout the novel are marvelous, beautifully realized characters. We have the astonishing Cleasby himself - what a creation! Brilliant and method-to-his-madness "on to something," edgy, obsessive-compulsive, scarred by a domineering father, of bizarrely diffuse sexuality. There are the cleverly written debunkers, including Miss Lily the Avon Services "Kelly Girl" temp who transcribes Cleasby's handwritten Nelson study, and her sparely but devastatingly drawn son, as well as the expatriate whom Cleasby hopes holds the key to the Naples episode, and the assorted oddballs, cranks, and losers who hang out at the London Nelson Society.
Much has been made of the Unsworth's "surprise" ending. I believe more than a few readers will anticipate some variation of the ending - I did, through no special perspicacity but simply as a hand-wringing reader, wholly enjoying his immersion in the Nelson-Cleasby universe and, riffling through as many unsatisfactory ways the book might end as I could imagine, hitting upon the one - one I had feared - playing it out, and thus feeling slightly let down at the end. As the dust jacket observes, "Something has to give way, and give it does - in the most astonishing and entertaining of ways." Having lived so intimately with Charles Cleasby, I wanted something better for him, and certainly something less - well, I'll say it, and I don't think it's a spoiler - hackneyed. For me, an unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise brilliant novel, my first of what will be many journeys with Barry Unsworth.
Rating: 5
Summary: Historical Obsession
Comment: "Losing Nelson" is a strange tale of obsession and the perils of historical intepretation. Charles Cleasby is devoted to his studies of Lord Nelson, completely immersing his life in that of his dead hero. But there's a problem, namely the events in Naples in 1799 which do not accord with the image of Nelson as the great British hero. Cleasby's biography of Nelson has ground to a halt because of this issue.
Cleasby employs an amanuensis, "Miss Lily", to help him out but she only makes matters worse as her view of Nelson is less sympathetic (and more realistic?) that Cleasby's. Can Cleasby resolve the problem or will it destroy his image of Nelson and thereby undermine the frail supports holding up his life?
Unsworth enters the peculiarly male world of total obsession with one subject. As with so many men, Cleasby submerges himself in an obsession with Nelson in order to avoid the difficulties of social interaction with other people. His vulnerability is not overcome, rather it is masked by what he thinks is his expertise and confidence in all things Nelsonian.
It seemed to me that such monomania is seldom encountered in women, but disturbingly common in men, where obsession can be total - trainspotting, sport, cars, writing on-line reviews and so on. Miss Lily has a much more humane, more rounded view of Nelson precisely because she is coping with the emotional ups-and-downs of life rather than hiding from them.
Added to this, Unsworth examines the often myopic nationalistic view of history. Cleasby never asks himself whether or not the British view of Nelson is truly a balanced one, never challenging the reasons why history is sometimes written like it is, as much for the needs of the present as for getting an accurate view of the past. Cleasby clings on to the image of Nelson rather than the reality of Nelson the human being because he needs to.
I thought that Unsworth's handling of these themes was excellent. Watch out for an appearance by the author himself as a character in the novel!
G Rodgers
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Title: Morality Play by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393315606 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Sacred Hunger (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393311147 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0385501145 Publisher: Nan A. Talese Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393313093 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: After Hannibal by Barry Unsworth ISBN: 0393317706 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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