Any Human Heart (original 2002; edition 2011)

A Stanford Book Salon selection for 2012-2013. I really tried to read this -- got about 3/4 the way through, but it was a tough journey for me. One of those books where the writing was great, but I didn't particularly like any of the characters. The journal style, with editorial comments, was interesting, though. Plus, I really dislike injecting historic characters into novels for cameos. So often it is clunky and now reminds me of Forrest Gump. (The one exception I can think of is Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, which blew me away. Her story of how she painstakingly shefit the historical figures into the novel was also worth the read.) From what I understand, the central figure (the supposed writer of the journal) is a character in at least one other of Boyd's novels. I put the book aside a few weeks back, and have not been able to pick it back up, despite the discussion on the Salon. I do intend to finish it one day.

However, I do love the title of the book. and the quotation from Henry James, "Never say you know the last word about any human heart."

The questions that the salon is discussing include:
Why does Logan really marry Lottie? Was he flattered, lonely, bored? Would he argue it "just happened"?

What dies with Tess (friendship with Peter? a piece of youth? anything else?)? Or does she die with the end of an era she represents?

Are Logan's encounters with Hemingway and the Spanish paintings mere luck, or has he done something to deserve the bounty?

I’ve gone back and changed my rating a couple of times already, I decided that since I keep thinking about it (much more than I expected) it must deserve the higher rating.
I don’t think there are any real spoilers here, but I have to mention some of the broad plot points to give my reasons for my rating. I picked this up at random thinking it was some obscure, unread book and not realizing it was fairly popular, or that there was a BBC production of it.

This is the (fictional) story of a man’s life, from beginning to end, told through his journal entries. He’s a fairly ordinary man, a moderately successful writer, who finds himself in some of the big historical events of the last century. Unlike similar books I’ve read (one just recently, which put me off this at first) he is not a hero or the secret brain behind events; he’s not the guy that told Edison the secret of the light bulb, or told the Allies how to win the war. This book is almost the opposite of that.

He’s the guy who’s standing in the background in the famous picture. When you read an account of a famous gathering of writers and artists, a dinner or a party, he’s the name you don’t recognize. I’ve always been very curious about those people, I’m always asking "what’s their story?" and apparently Mr. Boyd was too and wrote one. I think Mr. Boyd did a great job capturing that story, and the book is well written, the problems come from the same source as the strengths; the whole point is that the main character is not the most interesting man in the world. He leads a very interesting life compared to most, but not interesting enough to tell stories about. He occupies that middle ground. If you’re like me and always wonder who that actress is that made a bunch of movies but no one remembers her name, or read an obituary buried somewhere and thought the person had lived an interesting life, this will probably interest you.

The other side of this book is a look at what it is to be a man and get through life. Again, something that’s been covered many times, in some ways reminds me of what I thought the "The Sportswriter" could’ve been (which I didn’t care for). The subject is a good guy, and tries to be, but does things that are not always admirable, if never outright evil or bad.

My criticisms are tempered by the feeling that the book does exactly what it attempts to do. I had the strange feeling after reading the journals of a man’s entire life that I still didn’t know him that well, but I think in some ways he didn’t know himself that well, and that’s what you get from only reading his journals. There is no narrator to add extra depth and description. I like the fact that Mr. Boyd resisted the temptation to make the characters and events larger than life, they are exactly life size. You could almost forget you’re reading a fictional account.

If you’re looking for a hero story or a great adventure you will be disappointed. If you want a quiet story of a man trying to figure out his life and living through the big events of recent history then I think it was well done. ( )

This may be one of the rare instances where the movie adaptation was better than the book. ( )

I have liked this book a great deal more than I wanted to admit. It flows easily, and the diary format, with short entries and some gossipy ingredients, makes it hard to break away. This was addictive reading.

Several readers in GR have criticized that they do not like the main character. To me he comes across as an ordinary man, with weaknesses (alcohol and women), some cowardly reactions, but showing also bouts of integrity and a fair amount of self-honesty (to what extent does diary-writing invite to a truthful self-examination?).

As a sort of anti-hero, his story seems a twentieth century Education Sentimentale. But I wonder whether the main character and his development is the only center of the book. I think of him as a catheter-like mechanism that travels through the interstices of the Twentieth Century. He moves from Uruguay, to British public school, Oxford, London, Paris, Spain, Bermudas, Switzerland, New York, Nigeria, London again, Germany, France… Moving from place to place, he is taken in by the series of events that unfolded during the dramatic century: pre- to post- WWI; Paris Avant-Garde; Financial Crash and 30s Depression; Spanish Civil War; Crisis in the British Crown; WW2 with the London Bombings and the not-really-neutral Switzerland; again the Avant-Garde in NY in the 50s; Nigeria and the Biafra the following decade; and the 70s in decrepit London under the Labour Gov. or in Germany at the time of the Red Army Faction, etc…

The twentieth century itself emerges as the protagonist of the novel.

Boyd’s handling of facts and fiction is brilliant. He uses a typical trick found in historical novels and that can easily become a trap. In all this traveling through time, we walk through a gallery of the rich and famous (Waugh, Hemingway, Woolf, Picasso, the Windsors, etc…), but in Boyd’s pen it does not become ridiculous. He handles the edited diary form quite effectively. There are footnotes with data on real events and people, gaps are clarified through additional notes from the (fictional) editor, and finally a (fake) bibliography of the author... etc. No wonder readers at first thought that the main character had been a writer in real life.

In Any Human Heart, the life of an individual is tossed around by dramatic events so that it is hard to see to what extent the identity of any one person is shaped by circumstances and… “never say you know the last word of any human heart” (Henry James).

( )

4.5/5
That was a good life. A good, male life, lived through almost the entirety of the twentieth century. Or at least, it made for good reading material, but I'd like to think that in the end, Logan was happy in the least regretful sense that an old man can be.
I have to say, becoming a writer was probably the best thing he could have done in this time period. He met so many renowned folks, and took part in so many historical events as he traveled the world over. That may be my bias towards writing over other occupational paths talking, but you have to admit, people like Hemingway and Joyce popping up made the writing especially interesting. And it was in such a natural, unassuming sense. It's only much later that Logan realizes the worth of these chance meetings, and he never really stops being surprised at that being the case.
Besides that, I really don't think that the summary of this book does Logan justice. Yes, he accumulated failed marriages as a result of his womanizing, but had the tragedy of WWII not occurred, I believe that this particular trait would have been greatly reduced in his character. Also he didn't end his life in absolute poverty. Unless my definition of poverty is different from the standard.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading about this life that interacted so often with the world at large, both in the historical as well as the locational sense. It was also interesting to watch Logan's writing change over time as his life shifted around his values. His last years were especially beautiful, and it's regretful that he had to become a very old man in order to finally appreciate the simple life enough to write about it. But that's what always happens, I suppose. ( )