10 - The Michigan Daily Summer Weekly - Wednesday, June 17, 1992
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Waterland
Graham Swift
Knopf
GrahamSwift's Waterland will pull
you in and make you one of the family.
Listen to the narrator, his voice and
tone. He has a tale to tell you. Swift, a
master "yarn weaver," writes a story
about family, history and philosophy
-ultimately a story about stories.
The narrator of the novel is Tom
Crick. Affectionately referred to as Old
Cricky, he is a history teacher telling a
story to his students. Crick claims that
story telling is civilization's attempt to
fill the emptiness in people's lives; to
make them feel more important. He
uses himself as an example, "... this
future schoolmaster quaked in his bed
at night for fear of something -some-
thingvastandvoid-andhadtobetold
Shakespeare:
The Later Years
Russell Fraser
Columbia Univ. Press
WilliamShakespeare'sbiographers
allfacethesameproblem:littleisknown
about their subject.Other than his plays
and poems, we've got a grave, a will,
some portraits, and a few other docu-
ments with which scholars havetried to
reconstruct the life of the most influen-
tial English writer. When faced with
thislack of solidevidence, mostbiogra-
phers seek to bulk up their works by
writing a great deal about the Elizabe-
than era, Shakespeare's contemporar
ies, or some other indirectly-related
subject. In doing so, they often over-
stories and counter stories to sooth his
provoked imagination."
The narrator suggests that this feel-
ing isuniversal,telling hisstudents,"...
there's no saying what heady potions
we won't concoct, what meanings,
myths, manias we won't imbibe in or-
der to convince ourselves that reality is
not an empty vessel." He tells his stu-
dents that we don't outgrow this feeling
with childhood.
Crick affectionately addresses his
students as children - "Children to
whom, throughout history, stories have
been told, chiefly but not always at
bedtime, in order to quell restless
thoughts; whose need of stories is
matched only by theneedadultshaveof
children to tell stories to ..." - even
though they are in high school. Some-
where along the line the reader be-
look our most important source of evi-
dence: Shakespeare's own words.
Russell Fraser, an English profes-
sor at Michigan who teaches a popular
course on Shakespeare's plays each
Fall Term, has emended this oversight
by authoring a two-part biography of
Shakespeare, the second half of which
hasrecently beenpublished.Four years
after the arrival of his masterful Young
Shakespeare, which examines
Shakespeare'sfirstthreedecades,Fraser
has produced Shakespeare: The Later
Years in whichhe evaluates the second
and more productive half of
Shakespeare's life. The first book has
just been issued in paperback, so it
seems agoodideatoreview both books,
comes one of his "children" as well. and personal history. Crick explains
This creates an alluring bond between this intertwining of the grand and the
the reader and Tom, pulling the reader mundane, "and then it dawned on you:
into the narrator's family, friends, and Old Cricky was trying to put himself
life. One begins to feel thathe or she is, into history; Old Cricky was trying to
in fact, just a child, listening to a seem- show that he was only a piece of the
ingly wise, possibly crazy old man tella stuff he taught. In other words, he'd
story. Crick even begins his tale like a flipped ..."
bedtimestory,with whathecalls,"Fairy- Waterlandaskshow the past affects
tale words; fairy-tale advice." Then he lives in the "Here and Now." It ques-
adds, "But we livedin a fairy-tale place. tions the role of history and our fascina-
So Cricky goes on to tell his "sooth- tion with it. In essence, this novel is
ing" fairy-tale about growing up on the three hundred pages of a history
Fens of England. But this no children's teacher's philosophical digression -
story. Crick is profound, realistic, and anintriguing,andsometimesmindbog-
sometimes brutally honest -his char- gling digression. For the reader it is,
acters don't always live happily ever after all, not a very soothing tale.
after. _ Although the novelis deep, Swift's
Crick weaves his story around a wonderfully dry brand of humor light-
lesson about the French Revolution. In ens it up -often just in time. In telling
this way,Waterland parallels global his students abouthis grandfather, who
which are, after all, inseparable.
The known facts about
Shakespeare's life could fillapamphlet
but, by mining Shakespeare's vast cor-
pus of literature for information about
the man and his life, Fraser has suc-
ceeded in writing over 400 pages -
and one gets the sense that he could
have written a lot more. Fraser's ap-
proachis thatoftheclassicist hesupple-
ments the few facts abouthis subject's
life by searching Shakespeare's works
for evidence that can help us to recon-
struct Shakespeare's personality and
experiences. It is generally conceded
that works of art incorporate aspects of
their creator's personality; this is espe-
cially trueof poets. Shakespeare'splays
teem with information about the play-
wright, much of which is frequently
overlooked;Fraser's twobooksattempt
to make sense of these telling phrases,
thoughts, and characters. As Fraser
states; "Not writing about his own ex-
perience, Shakespeare surely wrote
from it." Shakespeare was not an exhi-
bitionist poet who needed to bare his
soulinordertoproduce;rather,asFraser
demonstrates, Shakespeare appears to
have tried to leave out personal refer-
ences, making it far more difficult for
his audience to get to know him.
Fraser does an excellent job de-
scribing the events of Shakespeare's
lifetime but, as one would expect from
such an approach, he focuses primarily
on Shakespeare's development as an
artist. A great deal of his two books is
devoted to literary criticism, and the
student who has taken Fraser's class
will find many familiar themes and
quotes. Fraser's erudite manner of
speaking can be so lofty that many
students are unable to decipher his lec-
tures, which can seem to them "full of
sound and fury signifying nothing"; in
these two books, Fraser takes his erudi-
tion to a higher level, perhaps because
he expects his audience to be so much
more knowledgeable than undergradu-
ates. For starters, one must be familiar
with all 37 plays to appreciate these
books fully. Fraser's books challenge
the reader - not only with thoughts,
but with prose that is so well-written
and crammed with ideas that one must
seems to have been more than a little
crazy, Crick says, "Possibly he knew,
as he wrote this, that he was mad -
because inside every madman sits a
little sane man saying 'You're mad,
you're mad."' Later, after Crick has
gone outfora few drinks with oneofhis
students he says, "Children, some brief
observations on drunkenness (made
whilst ina state of drunkenness)." The
teacher's observations are both funny
and strikingly true.
This novel has been described as a
"modem classic." It may seem espe-
cially challenging, say, for a student
still a little burnt out from the winter
semester. I'd recommend you save this
one for later in the summer, when your
napping intellect cries out for stimula-
tion.Swift'sprofoundobservationsand
witmakethenovelworththechallenge.
-Christine Slovey
labor to uncover the meaning of almost
every sentence. Fraser has spent much
of his life reading Shakespeare, solit is
not surprising that exposure to this di-
vine writer has rubbed off on Fraser
somewhat,withtheresultthatheseems
to be attempting to write his own work
of great literature.
One of the more impressive aspects
of Fraser's writing style is his ability to
describe Shakespeare by stringing to-
gether words and phrases from his
works.Whereas other biographies tend
touseShakespeare's timeandsurround-
ings to explain and describe
Shakespeare, Fraseruses Shakespeare's
own "words, words, words," often
changing the context but always mak-
ing them fit perfectly.
Fraser's unique approach, ability to
incorporate Shakespeare's words, and
superior writing style make this two-
part biography a lasting contribution to
Shakespearean scholarship that would
be extraordinarily difficult even to
immitate, let alone top.
-GilRenberg
0
9
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A bifold personality, "two distincts, division none," organizes Shakespeare's Bishopsgate plays. Romeo
and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, opposing faces of a single coin, present the same image
but from different points of view. Probably Shakespeare wrote both in 1594, within a few months of
each other. Next year he turned to The Merchant of Venice, a hybrid that skirts disaster, modulates to
sweet sadness, and ends with an off-color joke. All three plays, exotic on the surface, tell of life in
faraway places, sunny Italy, sometimes overcast, or Athens and environs before history began. The real
venue is London, though, the streets and places Shakespeare knew. The time is the present, his and
ours, i.e., timeless, and the business the working out of man's fate. (Pg. 13, "S:TLY")
John Shakespeare's death in 1601 passed without comment but his minor adventures enliven the play
[Hamletc. In 1599, wanting a higher gloss on his gentleman's status, he sought approval from the
Heralds' College to combine the Shakespeare coat of arms with that of his wife's family, the Ardens.
Though no grant of impalement answered this request, Hamlet seems to take notice - all that to-do
about honor. Self-important Laertes wants his duel ratified by "masters of known honor," like that
earlier duel, "well ratified by law and heraldry," between old Hamlet and Fortinbras. The infatuation
with honor comes up again in All's Well That Ends Well, another fathers-and-sons play. Shakespeare's
quarrel with his father extended beyond the grave. (Pp. 117-8, "S:TLY")
Resolving the debate between nurture and nature, Shakespeare on a second hearing declines to vote
for either. Like Greek Aeschylus, a playwright he didn't know but resembles profoundly, he thinks we
have to have both. Atop the hill of Mars are the law courts, embodied reason. Any world worth living in
is binary, though, and below them in darkness are the Furies. At the end of his career, the rational poet
of the Psychomachia, climbing out on the ledge that overhangs the abyss, takes truce with the dark
chthonic powers. (Pg. 246, "S2TLY")