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The
Novels of John Fraser One of the most extraordinary publishing events of
the past four years has been the rapid, indeed insistent, appearance of the
novels of John Fraser. Extraordinary in two ways, I think: there are few
parallels in literary history to this almost simultaneous and largely belated
appearance of a mature œuvre, sprung like Athena from Zeus’s forehead; and the
novels in themselves are extraordinary. Fraser
is an English novelist, poet and
university teacher who has lived in Rome since 1982 (see the biographical and
bibliographical summary below). Born in 1939, he belongs to a generation of
writers who became active in the late 1950s when many of the important post-war
socio-cultural adjustments had already been made, and new directions had to be
taken. In an interesting anthology of 1960 he appeared in the company of such
young writers as Michael Frayn, Dennis Potter, and Ted Hughes, with a brilliant
story about European diplomacy which reads as though Dickens had somehow
survived to try his hand at the most elegant manifestations of French surréalisme. He also published a story
in John Lehmann’s London Magazine.
But then, for nearly fifty years, there was not much else that was not academic
political theory. The
strange occlusion of such a talent bears some resemblance to the career of
Edward Upward. But unlike Upward, whose work is also semi-surrealist, the
flavour of Fraser’s work is international and not merely English. The earliest
of the novels recently published, An
Illusion of Sun, is a leisurely quasi-Jamesian skirmish of class and
cultural interests, set in a city much like Venice. It ought to be the point de départ for new readers, since
its mode of operation is more conventional than later work (though in its
sparkling inventiveness it is far from conventional).
Thereafter the international setting is gradually replaced by the
global. Fraser is interested in world politics and in the rich hopes and
analysed regrets of failed revolutionary activity. His settings become more and
more fantastic and apocalyptic. In his next novel, The Observatory, which is one of my favourites, the limbo of
putative activity and endless self-analysis that his characters arrive at is,
in a paradoxical way, wonderfully absorbing and exciting. I can think of
nothing much like it in fiction. Fraser maintains a masterfully ironic distance
from the extreme conditions in which his characters find themselves. There are
strikingly beautiful descriptions, veiled allusions to rooted traditions, unlikely
events half-glimpsed, abrupted narratives, surreal but somehow apposite social
customs. And deeply within the flow of the narrative, sustaining its onward
march, are all the involved textures of the invented societal life, the
colours, the animals, the architecture, richly delineated, very strange but
always crazily believable. The Observatory is perhaps the first
work of Fraser’s which sets out the habitual matrix and structure of his work
(the uncertain hero and his associates, the failed quest, the tentative but
practical relationship with women, the way in which all adventure seems to
become a convenient backdrop to philosophical and political discussion). It is
found here in a purer form than in the later works, but if you enjoy this book,
the later ones will read like evermore rococo variations on an important theme.
Fraser is following a conversational tradition in the philosophical novel that
stretches back through Huxley and Peacock to Rasselas, but there is remodelling in terms of popular culture. As
he has himself written: ‘It’s not Conrad (maybe “Beyond the heart of darkness”)
and I know the limits are those of my pen and what drives it. . . . I think the
whole stretch of writings is certainly a tale of snakes and ladders, but I see
them, the tales, stretching on like chewing-gum, like strips, Rupert Bear,
Garfield, Jane, Desperate Dan—with an occasional hi-tech pratfall.’ Fraser’s
work is conceived on a heroic scale in terms both of its ideas and its
situational metaphors. If he were to be filmed, it would need the combined
talents of a Bunuel, a Gilliam, a Cameron. It is not my business here to write
about all the books, but I can see an arc of argument and progress which
delivers in The Storm, one of his
most recent, both a fresher dry wit and a direct speed of narrative which makes
it indeed something like a written version of a graphic novel. And it is quite
up-to-date, offering as it does a cynical take on the last of old Europe and
the growing hegemony of Asia. Like Thomas Pynchon, whom in some ways he
resembles, Fraser is a deep and serious fantasist, wildly inventive. The reader
rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing
by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos,
however much wise reflection the author bestows upon them. They move with
shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly-detailed and as
without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll. John Fuller, Oxford About John Fraser John Fraser was born in London on 16 March 1939 and
educated at St Paul's School (London), Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and
King's College, London. He taught History in
1961-66 at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts & Technology, Cambridge, then
Politics at the University of Leicester (1967-68). From 1968–1971 he was
Assistant Professor, then Acting Chairman, Department of Political Science,
Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. From 1971–1984 he was Assistant
Professor, then Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University
of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Between 1978 and 2001 he had several
contract professorships at the University of Rome and University of Ferrara;
and from 1986-2003 he was Visiting Research Fellow at the University of
Reading. During his academic career,
Fraser wrote on and taught social and political theory (especially Marxism).
His academic publications include An Introduction to the Thought of Galvano
della Volpe, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1977 (transl. into Italian as:
Il Pensiero di Galvano della Volpe, Liguori, Napoli, 1979). Since 2009 Fraser's
literary work (novels, novellas, short stories and poetry) has been published
by AESOP Publications under the AESOP Modern imprint, including Black Masks (short stories and poetry), The
Magnificent Wurlitzer, Medusa, The Observatory, The
Other Shore, The Red Tank, Runners, Blue Light, Hard
Places, An Illusion of Sun, Soft Landing, Military Roads
and The Storm. Forthcoming works from the same publisher include Wayfaring
and The Case. Fraser is also a natural
horn soloist, and between 1997 and 2012 has appeared at venues in London,
Cardiff and Rome. Bibliography Poetry Gianicolo/Ianiculum
(Lupo, Roma, 1983) Black Masks(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2009) Fiction An Illusion of Sun(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1958; 2012) The Observatory(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1967; 2010) The Other Shore (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1971; 2010) Black Masks (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1984; 2009) Wayfaring (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1985, 1987; 2012) The Magnificent Wurlitzer(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 1990; 2009) Medusa (AESOP Modern, Oxford, 2010) The Red Tank (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2010) Runners (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2010) Blue Light(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2011) Hard Places(AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2011) Soft Landing (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2011) The Case(AESOP Modern,
Oxford, 2012) Military Roads
(AESOP Modern, Oxford, 2012) The Storm (AESOP
Modern, Oxford, 2012) Political theory An Introduction to the Thought of Galvano
della Volpe (Lawrence &
Wishart, London, 1977) L'Intellettuale Amministrativo nella Politica
del PCI (Liguori, Napoli,
1977) Italy: Society in Crisis / Society in
Transformation (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1981) PCI e Intellettuali a Bologna (con
un'Introduzione di Franco Ferrarotti) (Liguori, Napoli, 1982) Comunità contro Società? Il Ritorno alla
Comunità e la Ricerca dei Fondamenti della Socialità (La Goliardica, Roma, 1987) Il tempo dei giovani (with A. Zanotti and U. Wienand) (Comune di
Ferrara, 1991) Translations Rousseau and Marx (Galvano della Volpe) (Lawrence &
Wishart, London, 1978) Gramsci and the Party: The Prison Years (Paolo Spriano) (Lawrence & Wishart,
London, 1979) Max Weber and the Destiny of Reason (Franco Ferrarotti) (M.E. Sharpe, New York,
1982)
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