Crooked Timber

Unfortunately for Henry, it’s not always possible to get the last word, even in a quarrel with a dead man. In 2002, Fraser wrote Light’s on at Signpost, and the Daily Mail published a short excerpt from it on January 5 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=506219&in_page_id=1770). Here’s what Fraser thought of the politically correct scolds who didn’t get the joke, and felt compelled to express their disapproval:

“But what I notice with amusement is that many commentators now draw attention to Flashy’s (and my) political incorrectness in order to make a point of distancing themselves from it.

“It’s not that they dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.

“I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: ‘Look, I’m not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I’m in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly.’

“They won’t risk saying anything to which the PC lobby could take exception. And it is this that alarms me – the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step.”

I never got the feeling that I had to like Flashman as a character, even reluctantly. I think there are two other reasons for the reactions Henry describes among many readers, and they’re much less creepy:

1) Flashman’s moral hideousness, both the harsh early version of the character and the softer later version, is not opposed by high moral standards among his imperial compatriots nor among the non-Western elites and others that he meets in his travels. Flashman’s one virtue, in fact, is that he’s a bully, cheat, coward, liar, thief, and rapist and that he knows it and cheerfully admits to it in a world full of cheats, bullies, liars and psychotic tyrants who don’t know it or won’t admit it. Fraser doesn’t construct a world in which empire is oppression and colonial subjects have virtue by the fact of their oppression, true. It’s a flat moral universe where the main distinction between imperialists and their subjects is that the imperialists flatter themselves morally and believe themselves to be “civilizers” while they engage in brutality or folly, while mostly their colonial subjects are tyrannous or barbaric in their own less inhibited ways. But Flashman is, in his own narrative, one of the few “honest” actors who admits to the morally evacuated character of the world he travels through, even revels in it.

2) The series is appealing for reasons other than Flashman’s personal character for the cleverness of the way it revisits and retells the history of the British Empire in a key period; e.g., it’s appealing to history geeks who essentially look past Flashman to the backdrop.

Haven’t read any Flashmans. The description reminds me of Patricia Highsmith’s Ridley, although apparently according to the above quote, without redeeming irony. Unless I have Highsmith wrong.

it’s appealing to history geeks who essentially look past Flashman to the backdrop

This too.

Qt: “t’s nt tht thy dslk th bks. Bt whr nc th nn-PC thng cld pss nrmrkd, thy nw fl thy mst wrn rdrs tht sm my fnd Flshmn ffnsv, nd tht hs vws r crtnly nt ths f th ntrvwr r rvwr, Gd frbd.

“ fnd th dsclmrs lrmng. Thy r lmst kn-jrk rctn nd ftn rthr nrvs n, s f th wrtr wr syng: ‘Lk, ’m nt rcst r sxst. hld th rght vws nd ’m n ln wth mdrn nlghtnd thght, hnstly.’
ndQt:

Fscntng tht Hnry hmslf ds xctly wht Frsr sd h wld.

“Bt th rp scn n th frst bk brks tht llsn, mkng clr wht th mdrn rdr mght prfr t frgt; tht mn lk Flshmn n th nntnth cntry wldn’t hv hd mny qlms t ll bt rpng ‘ntv’ wmn.”

Nt tht th 19th cntry hs nthng t d wth t. Mn lk Flshmn n NY cntry wld’nt hv hd mny qlms t ll bt rpng ‘ntv’ (r ny) wmn. Flshmn s n mrl scpth-sn’t h?

S why dd Hnry phrs t ths-why dd h mntn th fct tht Flshmn s frm th 19th cntry?

‘Lk, ’m nt rcst r sxst. hld th rght vws nd ’m n ln wth mdrn nlghtnd thght, hnstly.’

t wld b ntrstng t cmpr n ndvdl’s rspns t Flshmn wth hs rspns t mrcn Psych (r sm thr mdrn, nn-clnl psychpth). dn’t knw f Hnry hs vr wrttn bt mrcn Psych r nyn smlr (Fght Clb? V fr Vndtt? thrs?).

Cvt: ‘v nvr hrd f Flshmn r Frsr bfr ths pst, nd hv n prcncptn r vstd ntrst n thr rpttn r mnng.

Sk

Steve – given your persistent bad behaviour in comments on this blog, I have no intention of giving you the slightest hint of the benefit of the doubt. Any attempts on your part to act the maggot in my comments sections will be trollmarked or deleted as appropriate.

I enjoyed the Flashman books even though my family suffered from the kinds of private behaviors and national campaigns that figure in many of the stories.

How about only add to this thread if you actually read a couple or more of the Flashman books?

What Tim Burke and Lizardbreath said. I know many people—including well-informed young women with strong feminist principles—who have enjoyed the series, especially its vivid evocation of multiple worlds. But like Henry, I (and most of those with whom I have talked about the books) find later entries in the series generally inferior and in some cases creepy. It’s normal, of course, for authors of series to lose sight over time of their original definitions of characters.

Henry’s post, and the messages posted by those who support his viewpoint, show why the politically correct should never do literary criticism. Their position is that the author must approve of all his characters and advocate everything those characters do and say, unless the book contains explicit disavowals and draws moralistic lessons. It’s positively Victorian, though stricter and more censorious than the Victorians ever were—every work of art must be dedicated to moral improvement, as moral improvement is defined by the latest fashion.

Flashman is a scoundrel who tells a ripping good yarn, and doesn’t spare himself in the telling. You would never want to partner with him or depend on him, but spending a couple hours in a pub listening to his spinning a tale (which is what any of the Flashman books is) would be a pleasure.

Henry’s point is that either he must be able to approve of the narrator of a story or that the author must explicitly signal his disapproval of the narrator’s bad actions, or otherwise he cannot enjoy the story. Bosh and piffle. It’s Henry’s loss.

And you really have to read Quartered Safe Out Here to get a sense of exactly what an Atilla-the Hun reactionary he is.

But I admit it: I’ve read all the Flashman books. Seriously guilty pleasure.

The times haven’t changed that much. In Victorian times, raping a woman would be condemned in the press regardless of the race of the woman – if it found its way into the press. The latter is the difference. On the other hand, the colonial mindset has simply shifted to the Americans. Today, the NYT devoted a headline to Pakistan entitled Hope emerges in Pakistan. The hope, it turns out, is that Musshareff’s commander in chief will stage a coup and restore “stability.” The hope springs in the hearts of D.C. think tankers and the Bush white house. The Pakistanis themselves were consulted about their hope. They are still third class citizens in their own country, as far as ‘serious’ Americans are concerned.

So one should point out that Fraser did have his own breaking point with neo-colonialism. He said that the Iraq war made him ashamed, and Blair’s servility to Bush was intolerable. He said he was haunted by images of the casualties of American bombardments. Compare those comments, on the PC meter, with say Martin Amis or Ian McEwen.

gary – I’m not sure whether I really want to barge into the ongoing brawl between you and the Political Correctness Commissars in your head. And it would be a little mean of me to pour cold water on the fight anyway (I’m sure that you find it very satisfying to engage in fisticuffs with made-to-design imaginary lefties – you always win!! )

Richard – I do think that the books have virtues along the lines that you describe – but I also think that the author does want you to identify with Flashman (at least in the later volumes).

I never found the “softening” of Sir Harry that problematic. Cad though he was, he always had grudging respect for the genuine virtues of the inferior races he encountered, but just as he refused to take the moral case for the British Empire and its alleged civilizing mission seriously, he refused to get sentimental about the buggers being oppressed. It’s what you do if you can, and they’d have done it with at least equal relish if they could have. The central conceit of the series is that we’re reading the unpublished memoirs of a 90-odd year-old man who has seen much, suffered much (not, perhaps, undeservingly) and has seen both exemplary characters of all races and cads, thugs, and lunatics galore. Why wouldn’t he seem more accepting of human oddity as he experienced more and more of it?

Why can Gary say it, but I get devoweled?

Chris:
Apparently not (or should I say, ‘pprntl nt’)

Sk

tom brown’s school days is the starting point: a curious read these days, when it’s more or less unknown (in its day, the mid-late 19th century, it was huge): subtler than you’d expect and not reactionary in the way you expect either

As well as being fascinatingly homosocial, TMSD (published the year of the indian mutiny) is intensely idealistic: Thomas Hughes was a Radical MP and a “Muscular Christian”, a kind of Proto-Decent who (correctly) thought Empire-as-then-was was in massive corrupt decay and (wrongly) that it required a massive injection of morality to validate and redeem it, the model for this being the daunting educational reformer Dr Thomas Arnold (d.1842)—there’s a moment when one of Brown’s teachers says (apropos little except Hughes’s message): “What a sight it is, the Doctor as ruler! Perhaps this is the only corner of the British Empire which is thoroughly, wisely and strongly ruled just now!”

GMF, writing in the late 60s, is powerfully hostile to this very Victorian species of heroic crusading moralism, whenever it arises—and at least in the first few books, his picture of the Empire is an aggressive realist de-idealisation (the political architects of Empire are clowns; its heroes are rancid brutes like himself; or actively demented; or worst of all canting bores and simpletons—Brown’s little TBSD pal Ned East dies a miserable deluded death during the seige of Lucknow, and Flashman responds to his attempt to be an angelic martyr by telling him to “Go fart in a bottle and paint it”)

Two things I think catch up with the series; one is that, as the complex revolt of the 60s receded (or became compromised), and as GMF got older, he simply became less hostile to his earlier bugbears; and more and more to a captive of the later rhetoric of the period he was exploring—his portrait of Imperial China is (for example) sweepingly more disgusted than his portrait of Imperial India, which (whatever its justification in real terms) makes for a context in which Flashman, still the secretly cowardly Victorian James Bond but more and more a plot-device-with-loveable-tics, is indeed softer and less effective as a satirical device

the second is a formal problem with this kind of series—the bones of the story being actual imperial history, which the fictional Flashman played no part in, obviously, despite what we’re reading; thus, within the story-as-told, he never has to face the consequences of any of his own actions (or when he does, the results are ahistorical; occasional melodramatic comeback from other fictional characters at worst); so—again—his effectiveness as a satirical device increasingly diminishes

(Parallel with Flashman’s never facing the consequences of his hiostorical past, GMF doesn;t find a way for Empire to face the consequences of its historical past—including the rise and rise of other envious rivals in Empire-building, even less salubrious that the Brits: this rise being how clear-eyed and utterly unsentimental ideologues of “our” Empire, like Kipling, justified it—“their” Empire will be a LOT WORSE for you, cf the Boer uprising; stick with us if you know what’s good for you) (latterday apologists like Naill Ferguson also take this Pottery Barn rule of a line)

interestingly, the moment when the series actually becomes unbalanced is probably the episode covering the slave trade and the civil war: because here GMF doesn;t find a convincing way to mock and denounce the crusading moralising bores (abolitionists, basically); his schema breaks down because he can’t help but approve of the idealists, and—hunter captured by game—the story veers towards slapstick despite itself…

belle – that’s all very interesting, although I felt while reading it that the text that Fraser was really writing against wasn’t so much Tom Brown’s Schooldays (despite Flashman’s literary origins) as Kipling’s Stalky & Co., which makes the linkage between schoolboy high-jinks and the politics of empire much more explicit (I imagine that there’s also a lot of G.A. Henty in there in one shape or form too).

What I enjoy about Flashman is the trouble that visits and torment him. He’s not very unlike Wiley E. Coyote after the Road Runner—he keeps trying to get what he wants (sex, money, privilege, safety), and he keeps being pummeled, battered, humiliated, etc., and then the bounder just goes about trying all over again.

The fact that he’s a serial rapist (by my recollection, we see him rape or be a willing accessory to rape of at least five women [and one boy] in the course of the first six or seven novels) and in many other ways a wicked, rotten individual with precious little redeeming value goes without saying, of course. But he provides a window to another world and another worldview, and I think this is more important for readers in the end.

if a similarly politically incorrect portrait of the present american empire were made

You mean like Charlie Wilson’s War?

I’ve really enjoyed Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels (i.e., “Kirk and Spock Go Sailing”), so I figured I’d like Flashman as well, but ewwww!

Humbert is interesting because of his internal conflicts. There is none such in Flashman, nor is there any moral growth, or indeed any humanity. He’s John Galt.

and if you’re not upset or unsettled by them, dd, then you’re empathetically challenged—the point is the combination of both effects

someone from much the same generation aiming for a similar combo: spike milligan? (i haven’t read any of GMF’s ww2 stories)

A couple of points to insert:
Elio: your recollection is different than mine; I don’t I’m fairly certain that the first book is the only one in which he rapes anyone (and I’m not sure there’s many points in any of his adventures where he’s a willing accomplice to anything. As I recall, he narrated that he didn’t much like it, either (and, for fans of Victorian Morality plays, does spend a week or so being tortured as a direct consequence of it.)

And Richard: James Bond, at least the James Bond of the original books, really isn’t all that much less of a thug than Flashy.

I also think Elio is well off base here, after rereading a couple following the news. The rape happens in the first book, and after that all of his partners are (however cartoonishly and unrealistically) willing throughout. There is an extremely disturbing scene in the western US book where he specifically declines to use force and saves a woman from rape (and ends up with the Apache woman saving his life accordingly).

The Afghan woman in the first book sticks out in people’s mind partially because the scene is so horrific, but also because its rather atypical of the series as a whole. Viscous misogynist, yes, serial rapist no. Also, its perhaps notable that his foulest actions towards women usually end up with horrible consequences for him—e.g. he picks up an implacable enemy because of the rape and barely escapes getting tortured to death because of it.

As for the politics, empire etc. in most of the books the basic lineup is generally (a) the British with hypocritical and impure motives and bad political leadership blundering into conflict and being saved by one or two flawed leaders on the military side and the dogged determination of their common soldiery versus (b) non-western society with even worse political leadership whose faults and virtues are both discussed at length, with several of the more admirable characters in the book on their side and several scenes illustrating that their resistance (while futile) was understandable/just/necessary. At the end of the day, he’s pro Tommy Atkins more than he is pro-empire.

The only societies that really come out with no redeeming qualities are the American South (and that might have changed if he done the Civil War book, concededly) and Czarist Russia. Imperial China comes off very bad but given he spends most of his time at the Tai-Ping and Manchu courts perhaps this is more the period than anything else—and the opium smuggling and summer palace burning by the Empire is hardly glossed over while the artistic achievements of Chinese society are explored in depth.

“There’s a slippery relationship between the caddish but-supposed-to-be-entertaining sexual misbehaviour of the later books and the quite brutal rape in the first one”

I found the early books wonderfully entertaining,
and some of the later ones I just couldn’t get
through at all. But my interpretation would be
that GMF found he’d hit on a lucrative formula – and maybe had a multi-book contract ? – and
cranked them out with much less attention to
character and detail. That doesn’t spoil my
enjoyment of the earlier books.

Perhaps the appropriate series to compare with
might be the the Hornblower books, or Patrick
O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books. Hornblower is
a similarly good yarn, but the characters are
flat and dull, and as far as I can tell the
historical context is not so accurate and
detailed; some people rave about
the O’Brian novels but I only ever tried one and
found it unbearably dull, with its smug displays
of pointless erudition.

Another point to make about the Flashman character
is that he spends much of his time in native
dress and speaking the native languages. He is
always an outsider, and he’s giving us something
like a Martian’s view of the cultures and events
he sees. All in all, GMF is playing a fairly
elaborate and sophisticated game (in the early
books) which deserves respect and serious
analysis.

lemuel, read The Merchant of Venice again. Of course Shakespeare had Shylock give the “if you prick us, do we not bleed…” speech, but this is in the context of insisting on getting a pound of goy flesh in satisfaction of a usurious loan. Shylock is definitely the villain, not the hero of the play. Hard to think of a plot more calculated to appeal to contemporary antisemitism.

Does Flashman’s wife understand what kind of cad Flashman is? Does she understand the world she lives in? Does she also cheat on him? Is Fraser consistent throughout the series on these questions?

Does Flashman’s wife understand what kind of cad Flashman is?

Yes.

Does she understand the world she lives in?

I reckon so.

Does she also cheat on him?

You bet.

Is Fraser consistent throughout the series on these questions?

Yes.

One of the best things in the whole series is his utter incomprehension of anyone who isn’t as venal , cowardly, and self-seeking as himself; it’s not just a Martian view of India, China, or New Orleans, it’s a Martian view of Britain.

(Also, for a paid-up old buffer, Fraser is utterly vicious and savage towards the monarchy throughout.)

There’s also a strong argument that Flashman is, in reality, a hero. Time after time he gets asked to go off on some terribly dangerous job, and, bowels quaking and face red with fear, off he goes. But, a lot of the time, he has a choice.

“Of course Flashy’ll dress up as an Indian and go off to meet this insane native prince who has people burned alive!”, someone or other says.

Theoretically, Flashy could say “No, I refuse. I don’t want to go. The Empire and the Queen can go stuff themselves. I am a colossal coward and I want to go home” and he would survive – at the cost of his reputation. But, in the end, off he goes – terrified though he is – and that’s a pretty good definition of heroism.

The message of a lot of the books isn’t “Many of the people we think of as heroes weren’t really; they were cheating, lying cowards”, but “Many real heroes are very unpleasant people”.

down and out in saigon, I think it is difficult to interpret flashman’s behaviour in that particular scene as funny – certainly one has a clear sense of the cruelty and senselessness of his actions, and I don’t recall any indication of “she was asking for it”. If anything the scene serves very much to lay out clearly the nature of Flashman’s character – a man who will take any opportunity he can to take what he wants, and revel in the cruelty if it suits him. I think there is a lot of subtlety in Fraser’s writing that is missed, and the best part of it is his ability to get you to appreciate Flashman’s point of view, even though you know he is a bastard. This was Nabokov’s trick as well.

Ajay, most of Flashman’s adventures he tried desperately to get out of. Many of them he was essentially kidnapped into. A large part of the joke of his “heroism” is that he only goes along with the dangers so he can maintain his image, because he’s vain and self-serving – which makes his inevitable trials all the more amusing. As Magistra said, almost every one of his trials is a reflection of exactly the sort of vices got him into the situation to start with. (And, a lot of the adventures he “chose” came about because he was fleeing someone else, or because he misjudged the natives…)

James Bond’s been mentioned a couple of times here and I’m surprised the conversation hasn’t veered around to him, because he’s a much more stark example of exactly the same transformation Flashy goes through, and a much more influential one. Shouldn’t we be disgusted by Fleming’s nasty little thug, who routinely overcomes struggling women in his “amorous” encounters? Aren’t we disturbed by the naked Empire-loving wish-fulfillment of the whole series? Shouldn’t we deplore his transformation into a lovable minor superhero and barely even a rogue in the films? Or are we shielded from all that by the fact that Fleming quite obviously likes Bond, papering over exactly the things Flashy reveals?

[...] 8, 2008 in history and current events by eric Unlike Henry Farrell, I read with pleasure the entire Flashman series by the now-late George MacDonald Fraser. Fraser [...]

I loved the Aubrey-Maturin novels on my second attempt at reading them (last year). My first attempt was in the 90’s and for some reason, at that time I thought they were dull. I can only assume I was under heavy sedation during that whole decade, but can’t account for how it happened.

It’s another fine irony that while Flashman
tangles with many strong and intelligent women
and generally comes out on top, in his marriage
he is subjugated by a halfwit.

“Any woman can manage a clever man, but it takes a very clever woman indeed to manage a fool.”

Sorry, that was pretty garbled. I mean if you think … rape is wrong… is OTT.

Flippanter #60: If your only possible reactions to reading a book are 100% hilarity and approval versus purse-lipped rejection, maybe your grasp of nuance is a little challenged and you would be better off commenting on a simpler blog.

“I just can’t stay interested in a novel (or especially a series of novels) where I have no moral investment in a character. If it means I’m humorless, so be it.”
Chuck reminds me of Georgie in The Magnificent Ambersons: “My theory of literature is an author who does not indulge in trashiness—writes about people you could introduce into your own home.”