GREEN THOUGHTS

Those lovely people at The Observer published a review of Herbert Read's The Green Child yesterday. The reviewer (Octavia Morris) notes the recurring theme of the narrator's death (symbolic, feigned or actual) as one of the unifying themes in this wonderful, strange visionary novel, and comments that:

With bizarre comic irony, this imaginative, philosophical novel perfectly balances fantasy and reality.

As I work my way through the Capuchins, The Green Child will remain one of the most powerful and visionary novels in the list, and I look forward to revisiting it in the future. In particular, Read's vision of an alternative, utopian society stands out from its multitudinous counterparts - from all kinds of writing - for its sheer novelty and thoughtfulness.

David

POLITERATURE

Having nearly finished Herbert Read's Green Child, I'm struck by the resonances it has with the recent national ballot, of which you may have heard.

Half of the book describes how, having been mistaken for a political agent, the narrator plans and executes the downfall of a fictitious South American régime and replaces it with a benevolent dictatorship, albeit one guided by highly idealistic moral principles. Here's a passage with which, I would guess, not all politicians of the various hues would agree:

The state must be incorruptible, or, as we might say, armed against sedition. Sedition is only provoked by injustice, but injustice implies not only the failure to administer the laws established for the common good, but also the existence of unimpeachable injustices, chief of which is the inequality of wealth.

Politics is of course not a stranger to works of literary fiction, from Anthony Trollope's epic Palliser chronicles through to, for example, Michael Dobbs' satirical novels, so brilliantly televised in the 1990's. We're very pleased to have re-introduced Mr. Read's classic novel to this genre.

David