Writers, writing and Dodie Smiths I Capture the Castle

When reading PG Wodehouses'Love Among the Chickens'recently'I was struck by the narrators curiosity regarding to what extent the work of authors is influenced by their private affairs. These words resonated with me as they were the third time in as many books that Id come across a similar sentiment; the other books being Nabokovs'Lolita and Dodie Smiths I Capture the Castle, both of which are transcendent works that involve literary types and themes in a way thats mesmerisingly recursive.

In her introductory essay to I Capture the Castle'(included in the Folio Society edition), Valerie Grove describes the torment experienced by Smith in the writing of'the novel:'

She kept a 100,000-word notebook on her progress, which reveals that it almost drove her to a breakdown. She was so anxious that her first novel should be a success after the long years of frustration that she spent two years on rewriting, when every line of dialogue reverberated in her head, interrupting her sleep, causing her to wake each day with a visceral dread, her mind nagged with doubt, her brain throbbing. She felt she was disintegrating, mentally and physicallyendlessly, she noted her anxieties over whether the characters worked: never, never have I suffered so over any piece of work. Sometimes I would spend two hours without getting one short paragraph of revision right. And always I was dogged by the fear that my creative powers were fading for good, that I should never be able to write anything else in the future.

The novel, incidentally, reads in an astonishingly effortless manner, its breezy, mirthful prose belying none of the creative anguish experienced by Smith. Where this conflict does break through to the surface is in the contrast of the characters of narrator Cassandra and her father, the reclusive and acclaimed author James Mortmain. Cassandras efforts to capture the castle are almost hypergraphic: her narration occurs in what is close enough to real time, brimming with quick and easy observation and unselfconscious diarisation. She has mastered, she tells us, the art of speed writing.

In contrast, her father is crippled by what is described as writers block, but which seems attributable instead to the overwhelming pressure he faces in writing a sophomore volume capable of living up to, or surpassing, his debut'Jacob Wrestling. Its time that this legend that Im a writer ceased, he snaps at his daughter at one point. And'when asked by a visitor when a follow-up might be expectedthis some years after the books publicationhe responds, deflated, shoulders sagging, with a breathed, never.

His interrogator quickly seeks to atone for his misstep with the following:

Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator theyre complete, not leading anywhere The originators among writersperhaps, in a sense, the only true creatorsdip deep and bring up one perfect work; complete, not a link in a chain. Later, they dip againfor something as unique. God may have created other worlds, but he obviously didnt go on adding to this one.

This is certainly the case for Cassandras father, whose slowly transpiring follow-up effort involves a bizarre mish-mash of exploratory elementseverything from nonsensical crossword puzzles to fishbone-inspired word art. Its the creative equivalent of the identity binary found in siblings: the only way to avoid comparison with a brother or sister is to position oneself in an utterly oppositional manner. And the author whose oeuvre is utterly divergent is safer, in a way, than the author who works down a kind of bibliographic train-line. Its easier to separate the author and work, after all, if the work is all manner of things.

Its hard not to draw the kind of parallel suggested by Wodehouse here: the inevitable link between the author and the authored. After all, as Milan Kundera suggests, arent all characters simply an author exploring his or her possible selves? (But some characters in books are very real, writes Cassandra.) But this brings with it an obvious issue, as alluded to above: the conflation of the author and the authors work, and the resulting critique not only of the work, but of the individual.''This seems to be at the heart of James Mortmains writers block, and its an idea that Smith looks at with deep-seated irony and cynicism. Theres a point where Mortmain is said to have changed his mind about ithe now thinks he'did mean all the things the critic says he did, and its hard not to read this as a cynical capitulation, particularly when we hear of the subject of his second book.

Although plot-wise it comprises only a small element of the book, the battle of the author and authors creation (and indeed the re-creation of that creation by the reading public) is immensely palpable throughout I Capture the Castle, and despite Mortmains sardonic note about the interpretive liberties of critics, its hard not to concede Wodehouses point about the inevitable interrelation of art and life. To what extent is the work of authors influenced by their private affairs? he asks; to which we can respond to as great an extent as the reader wishes it to be so

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Other books by Dodie Smith: