decline and fall...

'People get ideas about a thing they call life. It sets them all wrong.'

A line offered by the obscure character Prof. Otto Silenus. Genius. Architect and all round oddity. Paul Pennyfeather is the protagonist of the entertaining 'Decline and Fall', charting an unbelievable year of his life, death and renaissance.  Despite this, it is Silenus who proves to be the most complex and interesting character.

The line above suggests a certain fatalism or existentialism inasmuch as the perceived aversion to planning suggests that it would be essentially futile. This inevitability has been explored previously in the reading series and it further enhanced but the title of this book making reference to a 'Decline of the West' who's raison d'etre was to highlight the inevitable rise and fall of cultures.

I must say I really enjoyed the book. I am huge fan of the Cohen brothers films and I feel that this has all the hallmarks of one of their screenplays. A character whose situation is plunged into chaos and spirals out of control, always with the reader tantalised into believing that things will straighten out, often opportunities missed through other peoples decisions, generally a mix of frustration and excitement... finds himself in unfortunate situations which are not necessarily of his making....
this proves the authors view that the best laid plans go to waste... so why bother.... neitzche

but more than the Cohen brothers, I was often reminded of John Fowles' The Magus; an astounding novel dealing with questions of control and perceptions of reality. The protagonist, Nicholas [an Oxford educated teacher who finds himself on a Greek island following a personal crisis] has a year of huge upheaval followed by a rebirth of sorts. His journey is defined by experiences orchestrated by other etherial characters, the outcome is often negative or hurtful yet you get the sense that it healthy for Nicholas' personal development. Familiar? The main perpetrator is Conchis, a complex character in the Silenus mould but far darker and mystical.

I wouldn't call it funny, but maybe that is harsh... at most I mustered a grin but I still found it really enjoyable. As a quasi-satire on the public school attending, bolli' swilling upper classes. While being scornful of their behaviour and the tone being generally negative, Paul finds himself happily moving within those same circles with Margot Beste-Chetwynde, and it is ultimately these upper-class old boy networks which gives him back his freedom. Maybe this is a commentary on the rich always winning despite their actions, and a wider observation of the inequitable reality of a capitalist society. As we have explored in some detail previously, the capitalist economy is based on the principal that money will follow money. There is also a  undercurrent of the futility of planning
It is an interesting conflict within Margots character that she is very much a member of the leisure class, yet part of her disdain for the old King's Thursday Hall was the iconography of the architecture;

'I can't think of anything more bourgeois and awful than timbered Tudor architecture.'

Margot tore down this monument to the bourgeoisie in favour of a starkly modern design from the  Corbusier-ian hand of Professor Silenus. Replacing the grandiose scale which necessitated an army of servants with a modernist house. The only problem that Silenus saw with the house was the awkward incumbent of man. A reworking of Corbusier's idea of the house being a machine for living in. Silenus goes further, suggesting that no residential buyidling can be beautiful, because the 'human' element can not be eliminated. Explicitly ststing that all ill comes from man. This characterisation rather feels like the author is poking fun at this contemporary attitude which is massively exaggerated.

There is a fair amount of scorn poured on the steretypical idea of propriety in English society, some of which has subsided since Evelyn Waugh wrote this book, but not all. It makes

suggesting modernism is less principled .. margot justifies her job [to herself] by asserting that the ends justify the means; prostitution is fine if the outcome is success. She is a Faustian character and  a capitalist whereas Paul displays characterisations of Nietzsche's happiness will only be ahieved as a by-product of sucessfully achieving one's aims. The means are more important than the ends.

margot ends up marrying someone she doesnt love to free paul... though his freedom is not total...
full circle... cyclical... decline of the west... inevitability... pow