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Journalism of Courage
Iris Murdoch8217;s death after a losing, debilitating battle with Alzheimer8217;s disease has closed the final chapter in a literary career spanning half a century. She made her debut as a novelist with Under the Net at a time when the Angry Young Men led by John Osborne were shocking post-war Britain with their gritty, working class realism. Today, the Angry Young Men constitute a chapter in literary history, while with every offering, Murdoch8217;s reputation burgeoned, and she achieved the dream of every writer 8212; not the Nobel 8212; but to be read, and read and read yet again.
Murdoch is usually described as a woman novelist. It was one she was not comfortable with. She preferred to be accepted as a writer in a Man8217;s World. In many ways, this reflects the desires of women of her generation born after the First World War to be accepted as equal, and not different. In their different ways, the same desire was manifested by Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf. For Murdoch, good art should be able to transcendgender. As she put it in a 1980s talk: 8220;The novel is about facing up to the truth and living with a more realistic view of oneself and other people.8221;
Unlike the galaxy of writers such as A.S. Byatt, Fay Weldon and Anita Brookner, in which she is usually included, Murdoch did not experiment with language. What she brought to the page, instead, was the revival of the rich textures of 19th century Dickensian prose. And this form suited her well, for within its compass she balanced realism, fabulation, love, philosophy 8212; and still managed to make this brew enjoyable.
In her 30-odd novels, from Under The Net to The Black Prince in the 1960s, to The Sea, The Sea in the 1970s and The MessageTo The Planet in recent years, people fall in and out of love and in love 8212; not a very original idea in itself. The originality lies in the intricate combination of realism and fantastic, even farcical, situations. Interestingly, Murdoch never used a woman as the narrator in any of her novels. This results in her exploring certain avenues normally not touched upon by women writers and allows her to castigate men through the narrator, as in The Sea, The Sea. But this does not mean women are left unscathed. Lest she be accused of dourness, it must be pointed out that there are incredibly hilarious scenes in almost every novel.
A neglected side of Murdoch8217;s work are her philosophical inquiries, such as The Sovereign of the Good and The Fire and the Sun. This neglect is perhaps understandable, given her insistence that there is a difference between writing novels and writing philosophy. They are reiterations of the platonic ideas, and immediately defeat her separation of the functionsof novel writing and philosophy, since they so suffuse her novels and reflect her love of Greek thought.
This love is brilliantly attested to in her wonderfully entertaining dialogue with the late Indian philosopher, J. Krishnamurti, in which two great minds untangle a web 8212; before tangling it all over again. Each time Krishnamurti sheds an idea, she follows suit. And immediately following in the footsteps of Plato, replaces it with another idea for Krishnamurti to knock out. And in the end, before she realises what she is saying, she thanks Plato for helping her understand Krishnamurti! But then, how does one reconcile this Platonism with her passionate advocacy of the novels and thought of Jean Paul Sartre in Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, the first book in English on the Great Existentialist? I think, as in the case of Sartre, it is this contradiction between practice and precept which makes her human for us, and will continue to make her so as time passes. After all, as Krishnamurti said, 8220;Weare human beings, not labels8221;.
