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Post by bluetomb on Apr 13, 2021 22:42:19 GMT
I've hemmed and hawed for some time over making a thread about Phyllis Paul here, she wasn't exactly a Vault sort of writer. But then she wasn't exactly any regular reader's sort of writer in her day (though critics and other writers appreciated her, names like Elizabeth Jane Howard, Pamela Hansford Johnson, CP Snow, Graham Greene and VS Pritchett) and she was strange, possibly unique in her way, and capable of fine unsettling vibes and a potently chilling sequence or two. Also if I write about her here it might spur me to get around to reading her last couple of books.
I first came across her by chance, a colleague was handling an enquiry from a member of the public about her and I happened to glance over the email, which included a list of her novels. One or two titles stood out as sounding like they might have been mysteries and her dates seemed like the sort of period my mum enjoys so I looked them up. I was not expecting to see the first I looked at, A Cage for the Nightingale on account of being the only one that seemed to have had a remotely recent reissue and review, being compared favourably to The Turn of the Screw, and I knew I had to investigate further. She began in 1933 for Secker with We Are Spoiled, and followed up the next year with The Children Triumphant. She then had a break until 1949 when she appeared in Heinemann with Camilla, and proceeded with Constancy (1951), The Lion of Cooling Bay (1953), Rox Hall Illuminated (1956), A Cage for the Nightingale (1957), Twice Lost (1960), A Little Treachery (1962), Pulled Down (1964) and An Invisible Darkness (1967). Her last was rejected and she died after being hit by a motorcycle crossing the road in 1973. But what did she write about?
The aforementioned enquirer described her writing as "metaphysical Gothic". I'll get a little more detailed though. She wrote intricate and gloomy psychological drama and mystery with varying strains of the Gothic and sometimes supernatural elements, usually of an ambiguous or symbolic character. She employed a dense, finely detailed prose style, the sort that will say everything about a character's face and mood, or give whole painterly paragraphs to weather or the look of a landscape after rain or the play of shadows on a wall, in winding sentences, but also one of striking clarity. All the better for her densely shadowed characters and events, and indeed her whole world view. For one gets the impression that she had a religious sensibility possibly Albigensian in character, a belief that everything of the Earth was not of God, and destined for decay and ruin, and that even those not so much of the Earth, as it were, weren't in for a good time either. All of which makes her not easy or comforting reading, but she is one of the most fascinating I've encountered, and pretty powerful at times. I'm extremely fortunate to have access to all her published books through my work, and though I don't have them to hand I did write mini reviews of all except the last I read, which I can reconstruct here. So first :
We Are Spoiled : Almost conventional by Paul's standards, but it introduces quite a bit of what is to become common. The saga of the Lauria children, Christian and his cousins Nancy and Louie after his mother dies and his dad descends into a sort of religious irrelevance. Christian takes a shine to wild child Jael Lingard, but they are parted when wealthy rake Llewellyn spirits her to France. She does write home to him but as a sort of joke Nancy and Louie dispose of the letter before he sees it. And time passes, they grow up on their close but different paths. Nancy and Louie's little misdeed lingers far longer and heavier than they might have expected (a recurring theme in Paul), there is also moral dissipation, mental illness and its effects on those around, death and decay passed from person to person and down the generations, and a sense that the whole world around, vividly, even hauntingly described, is no comfort and is heading the same way itself, in its way. All this comes up again also. The plotting doesn't get too involved and it lacks significant villainy or darkness until a jolting final line but it's no less satisfying for being less a genre piece than a sort of offbeat family melodrama, it's a rich, resonant thing. Christian is a sympathetic, relatable lead of sorts, a young man trying to find his way in a world of a certain indifference to ways at all, all the moving parts are intriguing and they work to an effective end. Paul was to come more into her own later, but this is sure a bright start and at times I did miss her in this less chilly incarnation than what was to come.
tbc.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 14, 2021 2:44:06 GMT
She sounds fascinating. Like an inversion on Iris Murdoch (probably not true, but last year I read a complicated novel by Murdoch from the period of the middle 50s with some odd hints of metaphysics and the supernatural--none of which really panned out).
I'll be interested to read more should you choose to share it, though she definitely does not sound like a daughter of the Vault's realms of evil and carnage.
cheers, Hel
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Post by humgoo on Apr 14, 2021 16:41:39 GMT
I first came across her by chance, a colleague was handling an enquiry from a member of the public about her and I happened to glance over the email, which included a list of her novels. You mean you work in a library? Enviable! Ms Paul is one of those forgotten authors discussed on Wormwoodiana, and it's great to read your reviews (and of course her books are unavailable)! |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 14, 2021 17:41:12 GMT
I first came across her by chance, a colleague was handling an enquiry from a member of the public about her and I happened to glance over the email, which included a list of her novels. You mean you work in a library? Enviable! Too true. A very noble occupation. Never got close. Ms Paul is one of those forgotten authors discussed on Wormwoodiana, and it's great to read your reviews (and of course her books are unavailable)! Her work sounds intriguing. Thanks for alerting us, friend Tomb! |
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Post by bluetomb on Apr 14, 2021 22:06:27 GMT
She sounds fascinating. Like an inversion on Iris Murdoch (probably not true, but last year I read a complicated novel by Murdoch from the period of the middle 50s with some odd hints of metaphysics and the supernatural--none of which really panned out). I'll be interested to read more should you choose to share it, though she definitely does not sound like a daughter of the Vault's realms of evil and carnage. cheers, Hel I've yet to read any Iris Murdoch but she is on my long list to try out. I find the serious literature of the mid 20th century increasingly seems interesting to me and Iris Murdoch has the plus of having been an actual philosopher so presumably less likely to be a pseud. But then it is a daunting field, and books about ghosts and monsters are so inviting, so I read less serious writing than I possibly should. |
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Post by bluetomb on Apr 14, 2021 22:13:28 GMT
I first came across her by chance, a colleague was handling an enquiry from a member of the public about her and I happened to glance over the email, which included a list of her novels. You mean you work in a library? Enviable! Ms Paul is one of those forgotten authors discussed on Wormwoodiana, and it's great to read your reviews (and of course her books are unavailable)! Sort of. I work in the Archive and Library of Penguin Random House, so largely I deal with various editors and contracts staff, but we also get plenty of enquiries from researchers, academics and the public at large. Lots of figuring out books people remember from their childhood, but some outright literary mysteries. Actually a few years before my time one of the Vault folk had dealings there, looking into the identity of the writer RR Ryan. As I recall they are preserved in a print out of an email chain in the Ryan files. |
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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 15, 2021 0:01:43 GMT
Sort of. I work in the Archive and Library of Penguin Random House, so largely I deal with various editors and contracts staff, but we also get plenty of enquiries from researchers, academics and the public at large. Lots of figuring out books people remember from their childhood, but some outright literary mysteries. Actually a few years before my time one of the Vault folk had dealings there, looking into the identity of the writer RR Ryan. As I recall they are preserved in a print out of an email chain in the Ryan files. Gee, it's a small world! That would have been me, and the archivist I dealt with at Random House was, from memory, Jean Rose. I've still got that long chain of emails too. Initially Jean was able to give me some information on the file, eg the different names he wrote under, but not any personal information like addresses - for that I needed the approval of the RR Ryan estate. But of course, nobody knew who RR Ryan was so Jean couldn't contact the estate, and writing to the last known address got nothing - classic catch-22! Finally Jean relented (I think she had to get approval from someone upstairs) and gave me the addresses on the contracts, which, at the time the novels were written in the 1930s, turned out to be the address of Rex Ryan and his wife Anne in Hove. It was all quite a long saga, and quite some years ago now. Unfortunately, now the copyright owner is Rex Ryan's grandson who I mentioned earlier - when I tried to get access to the records again a few years ago he wouldn't let me...well, wouldn't let me unless I agreed that his mum, Denise, wrote the books, and I wouldn't do that as there's no evidence for it. I'm an archivist too, but I work at a national archive, which are basically government archives - copyright for government records vests in the Commonwealth, which normally become publicly accessible after 20 years, so there aren't normally these types of personal copyright issues that come under copyright acts, eg 70 years after death, no chance of accessing manuscript material unless you get estate permission etc etc. |
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Post by bluetomb on May 19, 2021 14:25:03 GMT
Sort of. I work in the Archive and Library of Penguin Random House, so largely I deal with various editors and contracts staff, but we also get plenty of enquiries from researchers, academics and the public at large. Lots of figuring out books people remember from their childhood, but some outright literary mysteries. Actually a few years before my time one of the Vault folk had dealings there, looking into the identity of the writer RR Ryan. As I recall they are preserved in a print out of an email chain in the Ryan files. Gee, it's a small world! That would have been me, and the archivist I dealt with at Random House was, from memory, Jean Rose. I've still got that long chain of emails too. Initially Jean was able to give me some information on the file, eg the different names he wrote under, but not any personal information like addresses - for that I needed the approval of the RR Ryan estate. But of course, nobody knew who RR Ryan was so Jean couldn't contact the estate, and writing to the last known address got nothing - classic catch-22! Finally Jean relented (I think she had to get approval from someone upstairs) and gave me the addresses on the contracts, which, at the time the novels were written in the 1930s, turned out to be the address of Rex Ryan and his wife Anne in Hove. It was all quite a long saga, and quite some years ago now. Unfortunately, now the copyright owner is Rex Ryan's grandson who I mentioned earlier - when I tried to get access to the records again a few years ago he wouldn't let me...well, wouldn't let me unless I agreed that his mum, Denise, wrote the books, and I wouldn't do that as there's no evidence for it. I'm an archivist too, but I work at a national archive, which are basically government archives - copyright for government records vests in the Commonwealth, which normally become publicly accessible after 20 years, so there aren't normally these types of personal copyright issues that come under copyright acts, eg 70 years after death, no chance of accessing manuscript material unless you get estate permission etc etc. Ah, the Jean Rose era. I started a couple of months after she left so we never met. We still have the occasional similar conundrum of requests for access, they can get tricky indeed (unless we know the subject has been deceased over 70 years) and sometimes fascinating when pseudonyms or outright invented characters are involved (I seem to recall one gentleman English schoolteacher masquerading as a globetrotting lady journalist for instance). Still no perfect solutions and we figure each case out by itself, trying to find public records of the information we have, guiding researchers with clues and so forth, keeping in mind various protocols. Can be frustrating, but also neat getting the old sleuthing hat on, thinking like a character from an old story. I expect national archive work is a bit more sobering though. |
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