David Sweetman: Mary Renault (Book Review)
Finally read this one. I was familiar with Sweetman's Vincent Van Gogh biography, which is good, and his take on Mary Renault didn't disappoint, either. Some of the biographical details were expected: most of all, the mother from hell (thanks, Clementine Challans, for providing your daughter with a life long complex about a) women, b) being a woman, and c) mothers), though I'm gratified Sweetman doesn't let the father get away, either. (Apparantly Dr. Challans was Mr. Bennet without the charm or the actual bothering about the emotions of his daughter, i.e. he withdrew into his study and work, and kept husbandry to snide remarks and parenting to not doing anything.) I'm also not siurprised Mary was greatly influenced by Tolkien when she was at Oxford - go figure. More surprised, though I shouldn't have been (see also: Mask of Apollo), that she had an interlude of wanting to act and a passion for the theatre. (Makes me belatedly wonder about Julian-as-self-portrait, though.) And of course the whole nursing background. The John Guildgud as favourite actor crush fits, too, though I hadn't made the connect, as Sweetman does, between the publication of The Charioteer and the scandal of John Guildgud getting arrested for soliciting.
What did surprise me: the generous, restrained and mature way she dealt with love-of-her-life Julie's two heterosexual flings, letting Julie figure out whether or not that was what she wanted. I don't think many people, no matter their orientation, would have had the strength. I also hadn't known about her clash with Nadine Gordimer, though it made me realise, since I know some people from the International PEN who were already around at the time, I could ask for more details.
(Not surprised by what the quarrel was about, though. We're talking about Mary Renault the exceptionalist here.)
Re: Renault's works, I thought David Sweetman - who obviously loves her as an author - did a good job of presenting them in context but not overlooking flaws and developments. He really brings home what it meant to a lot of gay (a word M.R. disliked) readers to have homosexual characters presented sympathetically, and has his own favourites, I noticed - thus Nikos and Thettalos from Last of the Wine are for him more rounded a portrait of a homosexual couple than the cast of The Charioteer, which he sees too strictly divided between camp and heroic. He also seems to ship Alexander/Bagoas over Alexander/Hephaistion; his biography praises The Persian Boy and the Alexander/Bagoas scenes as the most senseous thing Mary Renault has ever written, while good old Hephaistion in Fire from Heaven doesn't merit a mention (other than as part of a Mary Renault quote about something else).
On the other hand, while he praises Mary Renault for getting better and better with her male homosexuals, he also decries the decline of her female characters, from the contemporary novels to the late Greek ones, or, as Sweetman puts it when talking about Funeral Games: "All the women in the novel are dismissed as irrelevant or murderous. Alexander's wives and children, along with his mother Olympias, die hideously, at the hands of other women. Eurydike's humiliation is only the most extreme example of a tendency to marginalize her female characters which had grown as Mary's novel progressed. The early, English novels are unsual for having strong women at the centre of the action, though even the strongest, Hilary in Return to Night, is obliged to accept that her life and career must be scecond to that of her lover. By the time she wrote North Face Mary's women were caricatures, and with The Charioteer she finally gave up the attempt and began to write about men who did not need women at all.
Again: thanks, Clementine, you domestic horror, and your non stop campaign to erase any self respect in your daughter because she wouldn't fit with what you thought were feminine ideals. Seriously, Clementine was the type of mother who even came up with a death bed rejection as a final blow. Olympias, Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Odell, eat your hearts out.
Criticisms: I wonder whether David Sweetman tried to interview Nadine Gordiimer for this book to get her side of the Gordimer/Renault/PEN blowup? If so, he doesn't mention it, but it's a lack. (He interviewed Mary Renault herself, at first for the BBC, and had the cooperation of Julie Mullard.) Also, I wonder which history teacher he had, because his summary of Cleopatra is, err, very odd:
Was it, I suggested, too much to hope that Mary Renault was going to write a novel about Cleopatra? That she would even consider writing about a woman, let alone one who had frittered away her chance of power for something as unworthy as sex, was a joke she might have resented. Happily, she took it in good part (...).
Um. Say what now? How, pray, did Cleopatra fritter away her chance of power for sex? Even Augustan propaganda at its most hardcore wouldn't have said that, because Roman pnropaganda accused her of just the opposite: that she was using sex (first with Caesar, than with Antony) to get power. Now you can complain about her strategies, or that she bet on the wrong horse (Antony) in who among the triumphirate would ultimately come out on top. But she certainly didn't pick Antony because he was good in the sack. He was the one actually willing to make territorial concessions to her, whereas Octavian by the very fact of his adoption was Caesar and his claim to be the only son was bound to see her son as a threat, and certainly wasn't willing to make any concessions.
(And you know, it's interesting that for someone whose "sexpot of the Ancient World" image was there before Hollywood, Cleopatra had a remarkable lack of known lovers. In fact, there are precisely two men we can be absolutely sure she had sex with, and she regarded herself married to both of them. Frittered away her chance of power for sex, indeed. Brush up your Plutarch, Sweetman.)
Surprise trivia: Mary Renault's first fannish crush wasn't Alexander. It was Edward, Prince of Wales, briefly King and later Duke of Windsor. Now the remarkable thing isn't she crushed on him - a great many people did in the late 20s and then 30s - but that she kept it up throughout her life, no matter what came to light about him. Talk about fannish loyalty.
Biggest "there by the grace" escape: The King Must Die was about to be filmed by the people who'd made The Robe until the project folded. If you've ever seen The Robe you know why Mary Renault was very relieved indeed.
Overall: informative biography of a remarkable writer. Not a must if you're not already curious about Mary Renault, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1025031.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
What did surprise me: the generous, restrained and mature way she dealt with love-of-her-life Julie's two heterosexual flings, letting Julie figure out whether or not that was what she wanted. I don't think many people, no matter their orientation, would have had the strength. I also hadn't known about her clash with Nadine Gordimer, though it made me realise, since I know some people from the International PEN who were already around at the time, I could ask for more details.
(Not surprised by what the quarrel was about, though. We're talking about Mary Renault the exceptionalist here.)
Re: Renault's works, I thought David Sweetman - who obviously loves her as an author - did a good job of presenting them in context but not overlooking flaws and developments. He really brings home what it meant to a lot of gay (a word M.R. disliked) readers to have homosexual characters presented sympathetically, and has his own favourites, I noticed - thus Nikos and Thettalos from Last of the Wine are for him more rounded a portrait of a homosexual couple than the cast of The Charioteer, which he sees too strictly divided between camp and heroic. He also seems to ship Alexander/Bagoas over Alexander/Hephaistion; his biography praises The Persian Boy and the Alexander/Bagoas scenes as the most senseous thing Mary Renault has ever written, while good old Hephaistion in Fire from Heaven doesn't merit a mention (other than as part of a Mary Renault quote about something else).
On the other hand, while he praises Mary Renault for getting better and better with her male homosexuals, he also decries the decline of her female characters, from the contemporary novels to the late Greek ones, or, as Sweetman puts it when talking about Funeral Games: "All the women in the novel are dismissed as irrelevant or murderous. Alexander's wives and children, along with his mother Olympias, die hideously, at the hands of other women. Eurydike's humiliation is only the most extreme example of a tendency to marginalize her female characters which had grown as Mary's novel progressed. The early, English novels are unsual for having strong women at the centre of the action, though even the strongest, Hilary in Return to Night, is obliged to accept that her life and career must be scecond to that of her lover. By the time she wrote North Face Mary's women were caricatures, and with The Charioteer she finally gave up the attempt and began to write about men who did not need women at all.
Again: thanks, Clementine, you domestic horror, and your non stop campaign to erase any self respect in your daughter because she wouldn't fit with what you thought were feminine ideals. Seriously, Clementine was the type of mother who even came up with a death bed rejection as a final blow. Olympias, Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Odell, eat your hearts out.
Criticisms: I wonder whether David Sweetman tried to interview Nadine Gordiimer for this book to get her side of the Gordimer/Renault/PEN blowup? If so, he doesn't mention it, but it's a lack. (He interviewed Mary Renault herself, at first for the BBC, and had the cooperation of Julie Mullard.) Also, I wonder which history teacher he had, because his summary of Cleopatra is, err, very odd:
Was it, I suggested, too much to hope that Mary Renault was going to write a novel about Cleopatra? That she would even consider writing about a woman, let alone one who had frittered away her chance of power for something as unworthy as sex, was a joke she might have resented. Happily, she took it in good part (...).
Um. Say what now? How, pray, did Cleopatra fritter away her chance of power for sex? Even Augustan propaganda at its most hardcore wouldn't have said that, because Roman pnropaganda accused her of just the opposite: that she was using sex (first with Caesar, than with Antony) to get power. Now you can complain about her strategies, or that she bet on the wrong horse (Antony) in who among the triumphirate would ultimately come out on top. But she certainly didn't pick Antony because he was good in the sack. He was the one actually willing to make territorial concessions to her, whereas Octavian by the very fact of his adoption was Caesar and his claim to be the only son was bound to see her son as a threat, and certainly wasn't willing to make any concessions.
(And you know, it's interesting that for someone whose "sexpot of the Ancient World" image was there before Hollywood, Cleopatra had a remarkable lack of known lovers. In fact, there are precisely two men we can be absolutely sure she had sex with, and she regarded herself married to both of them. Frittered away her chance of power for sex, indeed. Brush up your Plutarch, Sweetman.)
Surprise trivia: Mary Renault's first fannish crush wasn't Alexander. It was Edward, Prince of Wales, briefly King and later Duke of Windsor. Now the remarkable thing isn't she crushed on him - a great many people did in the late 20s and then 30s - but that she kept it up throughout her life, no matter what came to light about him. Talk about fannish loyalty.
Biggest "there by the grace" escape: The King Must Die was about to be filmed by the people who'd made The Robe until the project folded. If you've ever seen The Robe you know why Mary Renault was very relieved indeed.
Overall: informative biography of a remarkable writer. Not a must if you're not already curious about Mary Renault, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1025031.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.