Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990)

Many of the criticisms of this work are certainly easy to understand. Durrel’s characterizations of most of the women in the story can range from the merely inane to the truly offensive. Orientalism, so common in western literary writers during this time period, is displayed with the usual clichés, at times leading to sentences that will give most contemporary readers pause: he describes how the city of Alexandria “has been built like a dyke to hold back the flood of African darkness, show more but the soft-footed blacks have already started leaking into the European quarters.” And yes, the writing style can be florid or over-the-top ‘literary’ at times. All fair points.

The charge that the plot is hard to follow is unfounded, however. The lack of a strictly linear plot is stated clearly by Durrell’s narrator, as he wishes to “record experiences, not in the order in which they took place—that is history—but in the order in which they first became significant for me.” The book Durrell’s narrator is reading spells it out: its author wishes to write a different kind of book, not “the sort of book to which we are accustomed these days. For example, on the first page a synopsis of the plot and a few lines. Thus we might dispense with the narrative articulation. What follows would be drama freed from the burden of form. I would set my own book free to dream.” Durrell wrote a Modernist book, using that style’s themes: memory, time and space, urban settings, questioning reality, fractured identities. This was an important book *given its time period.*

What saves the book are its moments and its use of the city as the main character, not its overall arc. There are sentences and paragraphs that are truly gorgeous, writing that you know you have not read, in some similar form, many times before. It’s an entire workshop on how to use setting as a character. Long after individual details are forgotten, the emotional resonance that permeates the book will make it worth a second read, if you can get past those areas where the work has not fully met its own expectations.

Justine is the first book of the Alexandria Quartet, and I suspect the sum will be greater than any individual part. What appear to be plot holes in the book, unanswered questions, will probably feature in varying degrees in the subsequent books. show less

“To understand it is necessary to work backwards, through the great Interlinear which Balthazar has constructed around my manuscript” (50).

This book is less of a sequel to Justine as much as it is a retelling of the events and a reassertion of the characters. Whereas the first book warped characters like Justine, Nessim, Clea, and Melissa to fit the narrator’s emotional perspective, this volume adds layers and provides different histories and motives and desires that still add up to show more the actions from the first book, but but provide those actions different significance and meaning. These new threads come through the “inter-linear” provided by Balthazar. The “inter-linear” is literally what is between the lines of the manuscript, “Justine” that Darly shared with Balthazar for comment. In between the lines, Balthazar adds in the missing details. And at their most arresting moments undo and call into question what both Darly and the readers know.

I still find the principal narrator, Darly, a bit too much. Perhaps a bit less so in this book, however, as his emotional morass isn’t the only bog to wade through. There are some lovely chapters focused on Nessim and his brother Narouz in the desert. Pursewarden has a bit larger presence in this book via quotes and journal entries. Mountolive is more present as well. And as these characters come to life, the complexity of their relationships and various kinds of love they feel (or don’t feel for each other) become clear.

The writing is poetic, evocative of meaning that goes beyond what is said. show less

This won't be easy for me. If you happened to have read my reviews of the previous two volumes in this Quartet, you will understand. I have the greatest respect for the author's talent, the beauty of his prose, and the depth of his characters. In that sense, "Mountolive" appropriately takes its place in the Quartet.

My struggle is with the overall theme and continuity of the Quartet as a whole. I was overwhelmed by the first volume, "Justine". I found it powerful, beautiful, sad and show more mysterious. The entire experience touched me deeply. The succeeding volumes seemed to attempt to turn all this around. The series seemed to have lost its semi-existential dimension. Now, we were directed to political intrigue and interpersonal (gossipy?) machinations. Some characters lost what dignity they possessed in "Justine".

In retrospect, I wish I had stopped after "Justine". Or, further selfish pipedreams, the author had presented the following three works as a separate series. Both works, "Justine" and the Alexandria Trilogy (separately titled and published) would be immensely valuable (yet distinctly different) works.

No need to make me aware of the hubris my words entail. show less

I realized then the truth about all love: that it is an absolute which takes all or forfeits all. The other feelings, compassion, tenderness and so on, exist only on the periphery and belong on the constructions of society and habit.

My gratitude for M.J. Nicholls remains at the fore of this celebration. It wasn't he that steered me to this massive work. I am honestly unable to gather any of MJNs inferences in the direction of Durrell. It was more Nicholls' esprit, that laudable expansion on show more what we talk about when we review books on GR. Nietzsche started this ball rolling, waxing loudly that there are not facts, but only interpretations. This leads us gleaming into the vortex of Durrell's 4D (apologies to Sherman and Peabody) tetralogy, one name, one face, one book for each dimension in that dotty quantum way.

We begin at the End. The End, mind you, only of an Affair. There is something greasy and squeamish about this, much like Greene's masterpiece. Bendrix and Darley deserve each other, but before one can Blitz the Casbah, the threads separate and the emphasis chugs along at a different angle, involving other souls. Some dead, others despairing. There is a dank musk of incest here. This theme finds a bizarre counterpoint throughout.

The novel Balthazar takes the premise of Justine -- foreigners behaving badly in the ancient city -- and extrapolates it with an unknown resonance. A History worthy of Foucault is forming midway through the second novel. Darley/Durrell is establishing a "great interlinear" a hypertext with contradicting testimony interspersed in his own account.

Montolive is my favorite of the set and a likely zenith for Durrell's ambition. The title character is a diplomat whose own troubled passion vibrates the relations of all the other characters, even as War looms on the horizon. The poems of Cavafy haunt the crackling descriptions of the feverish Egypt of the 1930s. This is a lost city buried under Islamic nationalism and a modern legacy of defeat and corruption.

The Quartet clambers to halt in Clea, by far the weakest novel of the series. The necessary throes of Darley and Clea felt so contrived that I have trouble even thinking calmly about it now. What does remain placid is my memories of the book as object. I bought a hardcovered boxed set of the Quartet 20 years ago and attempted several times to find purchase in its opening pages. This was to avail. Last fall while hobbling about on a sore knee in Berlin, I went with my wife to an English Language second hand book shop just off of Karl Marx Allee. It is more pathetic than romantic to see an American limping about abroad with his hands full of snobby novels. Thus I am guilty. show less