Backlisted - The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Novelist Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient, The Fury) joins Andy and John to discuss Ford Madox Ford's classic novel The Good Soldier (1915), a tale of passion in which, owing to a narrator of almost comic unreliability, nothing can be taken for granted. It is a book that seems to change on every reading, both a kaleidoscopic psychological drama and 'the saddest story I have ever heard'. During his lifetime 'Fordie' was, variously, a prolific author, a publisher of historical note, a notable polyamorist and a serial liar; we consider the extent to which the character of John Dowell inThe Good Soldier may be considered a self-portrait. This episode was recorded live on stage at Foyles, Charing Cross Road in London on the evening of 15th May 2024 and is the first date of a monthly residency. *Tickets are now on sale for our next LIVE show in London on Wednesday the 12th June, on the subject of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with guests Dr Laura Varnam and Dr Martin Shaw.  * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show we can book your reservation and when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions Good evening and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast... So professional. Good evening and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Tonight, you find us in Foyles in London, one of London's oldest and most prestigious bookshops on the Charing Cross Road, famous as perhaps the great book-selling street, not only in London, but in the world. We're here at the first of our, what we hope will be, monthly gigs at Foyles, and delighted to be here with a

live audience. Andy, Foyles, does it have a special place in your heart? Foyles always has a special place in my heart, both now in its streamlined modern incarnation, but also in the old days. Who tried to buy a book here in the 1980s? Yes, most of the audience. Wasn't it a challenge? It was actually easier to steal a book than to buy one. You had to go to two tills, do you remember? Anyone remember the way that they organize fiction by publisher yep it sort of worked if you're a publisher it didn't work if you were if you were trying to find um i i i does by zardoz in published by new english library um i think it was a a healthy uh middle finger to the consumer which we could see but it's very nice to be here in london's glittering west end with a lovely audience for the people thank you so much for coming

and um we're going to be talking about uh a novel called the good soldier by ford maddox ford how many people here in this audience have read the good soldier by ford maddox ford none of you wow that's so surprising that is sad that is sad story of sad the saddest story ever told uh well it's really good as you'll hear for those of you who haven't read it which is all of you definitely this podcast is crammed with spoilers it's it nothing but spoilers. It's spoiler heavy. Spoiler upon spoiler. Because this novel is impossible to talk about without delving into the plot

and the motivations of the characters in it. So, if you're listening at home and you haven't yet read it, you might want to read the novel before you listen to the show. If you're here in the room, please don't go, but just cover your ears or something while

we're talking and we are very lucky to have joining us here our dear friend uh alex michaelides hello hi it's so weird to be here um i i spot a spare seat at the front that I feel I should go and sit in because I'm so used to listening to this podcast, not being part of it. And I know your voice is so well. And I know I speak for everybody here tonight when I say what an amazing thing you guys have done. And I've discovered so many truly fantastic books through the two of you. And you've kept me company through many lonely evenings which audience members could do more than just nod because they can't because they they yeah yeah because they they can't hear that you're nodding at home can they

god almighty right thank you thank you so much that's very kind that's very good what was it you said back there a moment ago you said i said don't call me a master storyteller alex michelides is a master story uh he was born and raised in cyprus he grew up with the love of old hollywood movies and dreamed of working in la as a writer after studying english at cambridge university he put his plan into action and embarked on a disastrous screenwriting career is that true yeah fair enough how many how many unsuccessful screenplays um well yeah many many unsuccessful screenplays and three films which got worse i was kind of sad about it you know but um crestfallen crestfallen but then i began to suspect that i was in the wrong job

did you feel you honed your craft while you were learning how not to write screenplays and then you were able to actually novels were easy yes i do i just think it's a different skill set and i just it was always never working until i tried to write something from a first person point of view right as a character and then i went oh this is a lot easier you know yes uh you decided to try and write a detective story inspired by a lifelong passion for golden age detective fiction agatha christie in particular which is lucky because in two months time time, we will be back here at Foyles in the middle of July, which we're very much looking forward to.

Wow. I'll be here for that. Alex's first novel, The Silent Patient, was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, as were his two subsequent books. He continues to derive pleasure and inspiration from writers such as Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith, and Ford Maddox Ford. The Good Soldier, which we are talking about this evening, inspired his latest novel, The Fury, which he is currently adapting for the screen. Alex, you said just now that the first person narrator gave you freedom to do things that you felt you couldn't do in a screenplay

is that true of the fury and is that something you got from the good soldier yes i think um one of the most striking things about the good soldier is that first person narration and it's certainly what i really fell in love with um uh it's the conversational tone and this device he has of talking to you. And so I borrowed it, for want of a better word, for The Fury. And I took the idea that the narrator is talking to somebody in a bar and telling them a story. And so it was just this whole kind of device of holding a novel, I think, is so incredible. We should say. It was just this whole kind of device of holding a novel, I think, is so incredible. We should say. It was published in 1915 simultaneously in New York and London by John Lane. We should say immediately,

this won't be a comprehensive overview of the career of Ford Maddox Ford because he wrote 81 books. He did. And we only have a fortnight in which to prepare one of these things. So we will be focusing mostly on... Mostly on...

And indeed, The Good soldier was one of five books that ford maddox ford published in 1915 alone yeah he always said it was his favorite book he always thought it was his best book and it was it's an opinion shared by many people as we will discuss in the podcast in general but why don't we why don't we have the blurb so i'm reading the blurb off the back of a penguin Modern Classics edition from the early 1970s. Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion. Ford Maddox Ford has been among the neglected writers of the first quarter of this century. His tragic novel, The Good Soldier, in which he portrays in the stoical but fallible figure of edward ashburnham an example of the english

landed gentry at its best was written just before the first world war open brackets it is a curious detail that the 4th of august the date of the outbreak of war is made a date of recurring significance in the character's lives close brackets this unembittered story what what says the crowd ripple through the crowd story of deceit and hatred was readily termed quote great a piece of art and therefore an enlightenment and beautiful and moving by contemporary reviewers a more modern estimate of its worth is expressed by Walter Allen in Tradition and Dream. That's what you could do on the back of a blurb then, right? Good old Walter Allen, the English novel.

Ford's finest novel is probably The Good Soldier, as formally perfect a novel as any in English, and an amazingly subtle account by one of them of the lives of four people who appear to live in harmony and friendship. The cover, designed by Germ designed by germano facetti shows a detail from a hotel room by john singer sergeant there you go i think that is a sort of moderately bad blurb it's appalling says that lady there boring boring yeah have you read the have you read the novel yeah you wouldn't say that would you know um me neither it's missing the word funny don't you think because i find it hilarious the book do you yeah do you okay why am i nervous i mean you know it's interesting reading um julian barnes piece about it which is so incredible and you know it's his favorite novel it is and he says

um a rushing contradictory time jumping place jumping stream of lostness bafflement ignorance and horror to which i would add humor as no you andy you're looking at me like i really you don't agree at all no i i know first of all i did find it funny but i wouldn't open with funny on this book this is this is this is woodhouse this ain't so that was why i was looking that's why i was looking surprised please tell us alex where you were who you were what you were doing when you first read the good soldier by full maddox for um i was in cyprus and i was about 16 and um a cousin was studying english at bristol university and they studied it and she brought it back one summer and gave it to me and um she said i think you'll get a kick out of this and i i did um i i think the first time i read it i really took him at face

value and i think i've read it countless times over the years since then and each time i think i believe him less hmm yeah yeah who is he john dowell john dowell john dowell so our narrator is john he's often described as the unreliable king of unreliable narrators but unreliable isn't quite right is it i don't no i don't think so i think i think what he is is uh kind of narcissistic and he tells the same story slightly differently every time so whether that makes you unreliable i think that's a kind of that's that's just not that just doesn't quite capture the weirdness of his relationship with the with the story that he's telling which keeps

unfolding new doors are opened new windows are opened every time he tells it it's not that i think he's trying to deceive well well i don't think i don't think he is trying to deceive you no i think he i think he's just making up as he goes along each time. I think he is an unreliable narrator, but I disagree with John respectfully, dear colleague. There's misdirection going on. Misdirection. From the very opening line,

which is my last quote to Julian Barnes for the evening, he says, the first sentence is one of the most misleading in all fiction. Why don't you read us the opening of the book and then let's discuss that opening sentence, please. Sure. So for those of you who haven't read The Good Soldier, you have now started reading The Good Soldier.

That's the favour we do you all. Forgive my mispronunciations. Okay. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy, or rather with an acquaintanceship, as loose and easy and yet as close as a good gloves with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs. Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody,

and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people, of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatsoever. Six months ago, I had never been to England, and certainly I never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows. A little round of applause, please. So one of the things that Barnes says, which I will echo, is how that lands on your ear the first time you hear it or read it is radically different by the time you finish reading this novel for the first time and then again every time thereafter

and specifically that opening line that very famous opening line this is the saddest story i have ever heard alex what's the tell word in that sentence i'd say heard yeah really why yes so why heard why would the narrator of this novel say he has heard the story unless he were telling it to himself as though he were alienated from his own uh complicity in the events right yes it's very very odd. And yet at the same time, Alex, here's a fact about The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. It was not written.

It was dictated. Oh, wow. Like Henry James. Yes. I didn't know that. So Ford Maddox Ford dictated it in the space of about two months, striding up and down his office

to his typist. So he may well have begun it spontaneously this is the saddest story i have ever heard or or he didn't or it's utterly deliberate wow that conversational tone suddenly makes sense because it's so i mean it's it's just it does sound like he's talking and he was a fireside's a fireside story, isn't it? That's the frame he puts on it later on in the book, that he's just talking to somebody. He can't figure out what the best way of telling this story is.

But it is still, every time I go back to it, that herd really sticks in your mind. What are you having? Some sort of weird out-of-body experience. I suppose if that's what you mean by unreliable that i just think he's it's more sinister than unreliable is what i mean so alex read it you read it when you were say 16 16 did you say john when did you first read the good soldier i read it when i was a bookseller in the 1980s do you remember if you stole a copy from foils probably stole a copy from Foils? Probably stole a copy from Waterstones.

Yeah. Penguin Classics edition, I remember. And it completely blew me away when I read it. And I realised, though, when this was announced, how little I remember. It's astonishing how little I remembered. I mean, if you'd asked me what it was about, I would have said... What is it about?

Yeah, what is it about? I'd have said, it's about a soldier, a good soldier. No, I'd have said it was about a really nasty love affair that's gone horribly wrong, adultery. It's about a love square, isn't it? Love square, yeah, a force in my quartet. I read it in the 1980s. I suppose I must have been about 20,

principally as a result of it being graham green's his favorite novel one of his favorite novels and i was saying to these two earlier that one of the things i found really really interesting going back to it for this episode of backlisted is i recall that when i read it in the 1980s it was often talked of in the same breath as the great gatsby and you can kind of see that it's the narrator reflecting relationships that he has involvement with but not perhaps not complete understanding of coming back to it in the year 2024 it's no longer talked of in the same breath as the great gatsby but in the same breath as patricia high's Ripley novels. Because there seems to have been an evolution in thinking about the unreliability of John Dowell, the narrator,

who may not be so much unreliable as fatal. How many people who read the novel read it and felt John Dowell was responsible for the string of deaths and suicides that occur in the novel certain number of people putting their hands up two of you go back and read it again everyone else I was gonna say that makes four of us yeah I think he is I think he's a John Dow is a murderer that's five yeah yeah five I think that's the thing about him is that he's manipulative um he's manipulative and he is uh delusional and I think he he's his story has got holes in it all over the place and he's continually it's it's as he sets it up as a fireside chat but in fact it's fact, it's like a confession.

It's like he's talking to a police officer, trying to remember what he said the last time around. Which is great because it makes me think of Double Indemnity or something like that. It's got that same sort of feel to it. It's a really noir book. Yeah, it is. I mean, what I love about it so much is the way that the humour always kind of turns nasty.

So I think one of my favourite sections is when he's describing Florence, his wife's elaborate machinations to make sure she doesn't have sex with him, which involve, you know, faking a heart condition, locking a door, fucking several doors,

and the little contrivance that she has, the bell that she can ring in case she needs you know rescuing the fact that she supplies him with an axe in case she has a heart attack and the little vial of prussic acid which she carries around with him and you think when you're reading it you're laughing thinking oh he must be so repulsive if she's going to all of these lengths to make sure she doesn't have to sleep with him and then you find out he kind of throws away at the end of one chapter that florence suspected that i would kill her if i found out she wasn't a virgin and suddenly you understand why she's

going to all of these elaborate lengths to keep him away from her and then the moment he does find out that she had been sleeping with jimmy in the very next scene she's found arranged on a bed with an empty vial of that man nod Look at that man nodding furiously there. Yeah, and you can't help, as a crime writer, my alarm bells go off straight away. Alex, prostatic acid. Not noted for its kind of, you know, it's not like taking, I mean, you know,

that's a nasty way to die, right? Yeah, you would be convulsing and throwing up and all kinds of things. You wouldn't be lying on the back still holding. I'm afraid mr dow your story doesn't hold much water i'm going to take you back alex you mentioned jimmy um i want to play a clip now from the 1981 tv adaptation starring uh jeremy brett and i'm going to ask the audience members if they can recognize here the voice of jimmy uh the american voice you're gonna

hear which actor is this what is he most famous for i will be throwing this out to the audience let's hear the clip i'm sorry what's that jimmy i said that the hurlbird family heart sure needs careful handling oh yes yes of course you can't do better than Norheim, though. I'm an expert. I know. When I went around the world with Florence and her Uncle John, we reckoned that there was no place better than Norheim for the Hurlburt heart. Right. My trouble with the old man was keeping him off politics. He was a Democrat, you know. Liked to argue politics with every American he met. Not good for the heart. And the trouble I had steering him away from other Americans.

Florence isn't interested in politics. I thought Florence was never out of my sight. In fact, she was hardly ever in it. Okay, audience members, please raise your hand if you think you would like to have the never out of my sight. In fact, she was hardly ever in it. Okay. Audience members, please raise your hand if you think you would like to hazard a guess at which actor is playing Jimmy in that clip from 1981. Yes, madam, the front row.

I know John Ratzenberger from Friends. It is John Ratzenberger, the voice of Cliff Claiborne from Cheers and Mr. Potato Head from the Toy Story films in a young role that's very good that adaptation starring jeremy is it in my opinion but alex you watched it and you found it a bit of a struggle i i did yeah i think again it's like it's a bit like adapting

murder of roger ackroyd i think the so much of it is is you know there is a voiceover but the narration is everything in this book. Yes. I quite agree. I'm going to read the beginning of chapter two, which is one of the things John was just talking about. Just the first couple of paragraphs. And I want you to think while I read this, okay, here's this guy, he's telling us this story. What are the hints that we might not trust him? what are the hints that we might not trust him? I don't know how it is best to put this thing down,

whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story, or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of Leonora and from those of Edward himself. So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage with a sympathetic soul opposite me, and I shall go on talking in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance, and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. From time to time, we shall get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon

and say, why, it is nearly as bright as in Provence. And then we shall come back to the fireside with just the touch of a sigh, because we are not in that Provence where even the saddest stories are gay. Consider the lamentable history of Père Vidal. Two years ago, Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours, which is in the Black Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley, there rises up an immense pinnacle, and on the pinnacle are four castles, las tours, the towers. And the immense mistral blew down that valley, which was the way from France into Provence, gray olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the wind and the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not be torn up by the roots you can always count on a murderer

for a fancy prose style oh sorry that was uh i don't know how that got in there um but yeah alex i see what you mean about the the as soon as you start to doubt the voice Oh, sorry, that was, I don't know how that got in there. But yeah, Alex, I see what you mean about the, as soon as you start to doubt the voice, what are you reading? Are you reading poetry or are you reading guff, right? To try and seem reasonable and seem personable and seem like you're sitting by the fireside. What I noticed particularly on this reread was how often he contradicts himself like constantly you know chapter by chapter you know i

never think about florence ever and then the next chapter is i spend hours obsessing about how much i hate her and then it just it just changes the whole time yeah yeah yeah john why do you think this novel, beyond it being a great novel, why does it seem to yield different meanings on different readings? I think that's kind of the key to why it's so, it has lasted. It's interesting it says that it was little regarded in the first half of the, and it's true that it wasn't a massive bestseller, I think. But it doesn't go away because of the control of that voice that Ford has. And, you know, whether it's interesting or not interesting to say that he was very self-consciously trying to write a kind of version of de Maupassant,

wanted to write a French novel. He was influenced by Henry James. He'd worked with Conrad. There's a modern quality to the control of the voice. You read it, and then you, as Alex has just said, you think, ah, okay, I see what's going on here. And then he completely pulls the next chapter. He'll completely pull the rug from under your feet. So just in terms of a, and I was going to ask you this question, you know, you famously are not a man who particularly loves plot, but there is a massive amount of plot in this novel. I mean, a huge amount.

I mean, it's up there with Chandler, you know, for lots of kind of things happening and things maybe not quite happening and being able for the readers to be able to work them out at first. And yet, it doesn't read like a thriller in that way. There's some quality of that voice that Ford imbues the character of Dal with. You finish the book, you want to go back again and read it again. There aren't very many books, honestly, that I feel like that. But this is such a bravura technical performance.

And I know that's always a bit of a cop-out when people say that. But what I think is the, what are you trying to do with a novel? I think he says it somewhere in the book, doesn't he? Let me see if I can find it. It's a great little piece where he says something about what makes, it's a good novel, not a bad novel. The fellow talked like a cheap novelist, or like a very good novelist for the matter of that,

if it's the business of a novelist to make you see things clearly. Yeah, might be the business, if. And I tell you, I see things as clearly as if it were a dream that never left me. It's very Chandler, isn't it? I mean, when I read my bit, I'm going to do a really bad American accent, because I'm now, I don't, does anyone think that John Dowell is American in this book? Do you get that? Is that what rushes off at you when you read that prose?

He's not even American, everyone. He's not even what he says he is. Hey, you asked me about Chandler. What are your, you're a crime writer, Alex. He's not even what he says he is. Hey, you asked me about Chandler. What are your, what are your crime writer, Alex? What are your feelings about Chandler? Are you a Chandler fan? Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Particularly the writing style, which I've never really thought of comparing, you know, Ford, Maddox Ford to him before, but there's something there. I think the writing style with Chandler for me, John asked about the plot, right?

There's a lot of plot in The Good Soldier. I love Chandler, and the reason I love Chandler is that he actually has contempt for plot. That's the fun of it. Plot is an excuse for style, as it is for all good writers. And Ford Maddox Ford, I would argue, is giving you a story that if we look at the plot is absurdly melodramatic it's one supposed suicide or death or confrontation in a spa town after another it doesn't really hold water as a plot it's absurd What makes it a masterpiece is how the plot is handled in the voice of that particular bumbling pseudo-idiotic narrator. That for me is where the alchemy occurs in The Good Soldier.

Which is why, you know, I think Ruth Rendell said that it was the best constructed novel in the English language. Because when I read it, because I probably read it in a different way to you, I read it to try and copy it. and so i'm looking really closely to see what what i can learn and what i can steal for want of a better word and it's it's the way that he does construct it because it's why does he you know initially present this this this kind of one perspective of how they all interact and then he goes back and then he goes back and then he goes back and so it's the constant layers being added again. None of the layers really match.

Sorry, let me ask you, Alex. Then when you are constructing a novel and you are flirting with the idea of an unreliable narrator, is the appeal, as we say, misdirection? Do you allow your narrators to contradict themselves in order to wrong foot the reader? That's a hard question to answer. No, I haven't.

But having really got into the idea on this last reread, I think I might try it next time. I really think what we keep dancing around is something you said earlier, which is the key to it for me is very much is like is this intentionally misleading yes or is it accidental and if it's intentional it's a masterpiece and if it's accidental it's it's possibly less so personally i think it is intentional i think that everything that he says about the contradictions the murders the lack of explanations the way that his you know his feelings are either

you know love or hate for the same person and never really match up i think you're meant to start doubting him and even the i you know i read some contemporary reviews where they said the american you don't believe he's american and they use that as a criticism but what if it's not a criticism what if he's he's lying about his background as this character. Ripley-like. As well. I mean, in this edition, there's an essay about impressionism, which was one of the things that he said he was doing with the novel, literary impressionism. And the style of that essay is almost indistinguishable from John Dowell's style.

Right. So there is this sort of strange, is it Ford? Is it Ford or is it Dowell? is it dow how what's and does it matter i mean to me it doesn't matter i mean what andy what you said before i think is absolutely the key it's a brilliant thing to have a book that's so full of plot where you don't care yeah about what happens because you know what happens he tells you what happens really early in the book you can never really make sense of what happens either so many times and every time i read it it's like a different book because there's so much plot to keep hold of and you can't

keep hold of any of it yeah john you mentioned how indistinguishable the style of one of ford maddox ford's essays is from uh the style of arthur dow recounting his story to you in front of the fire it seems like a good moment to take a break but when we come back um i'm going to give you a little potted biography of ford maddox ford because i think the unknowability of ford maddox ford uh bizarrely will illuminate the unknowability of the narrator of the good soldier so we'll see you in a minute and we're back now normally i would offer you a potty biography of ford maddox ford but i had researched myself but on this occasion i was browsing through the stacks at the london library and i found a wonderful review of a biography called the saddest story a biography of ford

maddox ford by by Arthur Meisner, written by Paul Scott. I don't know how many of you remember Paul Scott, the author of The Raj Quartet. And so I'm going to read some of this review because it's so good on helping us understand the enigma of Ford Maddox Ford. Wasn't even called Ford Maddox Ford.

He wasn't even called Ford Maddox Ford. He wasn't even called Ford Maddox Ford. The review is called The Many Faces of Fordy. Taking on Fordy is an act rash enough in itself to compel our admiration for the biographer who sets about the apparently hopeless task of trying to pin him down. Arrange him neatly in one pigeonhole marked man, 40, rather mad about good letters, and he pops out of another disguised as an English country gentleman doing the rounds of his estates and chatting to his tenants. Then, just as you recollect that there were no estates, he vanishes to turn up again as an Edwardian man about town or a boian in Paris, hobnobbing with Gertrude Stein and young Hemingway. The pace quickens. 4D flashes from one persona to another. Poet. Hack journalist.

Illustrious editor. Ghost writer. Eminent novelist. Social lion. Preposterous bore. novelist, social lion, preposterous bore, respectable family man, aging lecher. You could say he was all of these things or that only three things about him are clear. That he was devoted to books, not only his own but other people's, a rare grace, fatally attractive to and unfaithful to women, and that he bumbled through life with an unimpaired but ill-defined sense of what was due to him. And it is, of course, the origin of that sense that gives the biographer so much trouble, that and the fact that Fordy was a charming liar, concerned not much with the facts so much as with his impressions of them, a sign, possibly, of immaturity. Wow, indeed. Now, that unreliable author is the creator of that unreliable narrator, who seemed to have quite a lot in common, don't you?

Yeah. That might be Paul Scott's gloss on it. So what does that make you think? It makes me think that if Dow is some kind of a self-portrait or if dowell is a representation of how ford maddox ford approached quote unquote the truth you have actually rather a kaleidoscopic and accurate artistic sensibility being represented you know we can see dow in the role of a writer all good but what are all good books they're books about books and the good soldier is a book about books you could read dow as not just the narrator of this book but the writer the person who chooses which emphasis to put on supposedly solid events there are no solid events it's all subjective

now we might extend from that and say okay andy's a murderer he doesn't have to be a murderer alex this is the thing we were talking about right is the book a masterpiece if andy's a murderer he doesn't have to be a murderer alex this is the thing we were talking about right is the book a masterpiece if he isn't a murderer what about if we kind of you think about um turn of the screw in relation to this for a second because you know i've been peddling this idea that he's the first unreliable narrator in fiction for a while and my old director of studies came to an event that i did in cambridge and he took me aside and he said you are wrong um this is not the first unallowable narration um in fact the bible is the first yeah and then he suggested um uh the the governess in turn of the screw and i but i would say that she's just mad right she's not doing it on purpose and that's the difference

between dowell and her. Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's really interesting as well, is the intentionality is important. I once tried to pretend to my tutor that T.S. Eliot was writing some bad poetry in the four quartets because he was trying to make a point. And my tutor just looked at me and said, I think we all know that he wasn't that kind of poet. So all right, I was just trying to get on. But I think the more you think about Dowell and you think about Ford, the more this does seem to be.

I'm not sure whether he was entirely in control of it, Ford, though. I don't know that. So what's your, John, you were sharing your theory about Dow in The Good Soldier. What's your theory? I think he's in love. I think Dow's in love with Ashburnham. I think there's a kind of definite sense that you said, which I'd like to share with the room,

is you said that Edward Ashburnham is the only good character in the novel. Yes, it's my contention that the reason why The Good Soldier is called The Good Soldier is there are at least three characters who that might refer to within the novel. That's the first thing. And the second thing is Edward Ashburnham, for all his adulterous behavior, is the only character in the novel with any kind of integrity dowell doesn't have any the two women don't really have any so what do we mean by the good soldier is the good soldier a soldier who is good like ash burnham or is a good soldier a soldier who follows orders or is a good soldier

a sniper who takes out one victim after another i don't know isn't nancy good innocent not good okay he does describe her as monstrous at one point when she's in the bedroom with him yeah um i do i would love to hear what you guys think about the title i've got can i read a tiny letter? Yeah, please go ahead. So, you know, I think it's quite famous, the fact that this was not the original title. The original title was The Saddest Story, yeah? Yeah, and it was serialized in Blast,

Wyndham Lewis's magazine, the first few, in 1914. And under the title, The Saddest Story. Which I think is a great title. Yeah. And I'm not alone in that, because he writes to his publisher in 1914, My dear Lane, I should have thought that you publishers had had eye-openers enough about monkeying about with authors' titles at the request of travellers. The Saddest Story, I say it in all humility, is about the best book you ever published,

and the title is about the best title. Still, I make it a principle never to interfere with my publisher, but to take it out in calling him names. Why not call the book The Roaring Joke? Call it anything you like. Or perhaps it would be better to call it A Good Soldier. That might do. At any rate, it is all I can think of. Yours. Isn't that brilliant? So travellers are sales reps, right? Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, the sales team are saying, oh, it's really, you've been into foils. That's brilliant. Well, one of the things, one of the things, with a good soldier, a good man, was Ford Maddox Ford a good man? In some respects, he was. he was very generous to other writers as that description we read earlier says he loved books he loved reading alex he would have been an excellent guest on this podcast

but um he was also something of a roue at best and of course famously he both discovered our great heroine jean reese and lived in a menage a trois with her and with his partner stella bowen and when that came to a disastrous close maddox ford who had been the original pub reese's original publisher and champion, wrote a foreword to one of her books. She memorialized him in her novel Quartet, and I will read her description of meeting Heidler, aka Ford Maddox Ford, for the first time, and you be the judge. Le Frank's is a small restaurant halfway up the boulevard du Montparnasse. It is much frequented by the Anglo-Saxons of the quarter and by a meagre sprinkling of Scandinavians and Dutch. The patron is provincial and affable. The patron, who sits beaming behind the counter,

possesses a mildly robust expression and the figure and coiffure of the 90s. Her waist goes in, her hips come out, her long black hair is coiled into a smooth bun on theure of the 90s. Her waist goes in, her hips come out, her long black hair is coiled into a smooth bun on the top of her round head. She is very restful to the tired eye. The Heidlers were sitting at a table at the end of the room. Good evening, said Mrs. Heidler in the voice of a well-educated young male. Her expression was non-committal. Encore deux vermouth cassis, said Mr. Heidler to the waitress. They were fresh, sturdy people.

Mr. Heidler, indeed, was so very sturdy that it was difficult to imagine him suffering from a nervous breakdown of any kind whatever. He looked as if nothing could break him down. He was a tall, fair man of perhaps 45. His shoulders were tremendous, his nose arrogant, his hands short, broad, and so plump that the knuckles were dimpled. The wooden expression of his face was carefully striven for. The eyes were light blue and intelligent, but with a curious underlying expression of obtuseness, even of brutality. I bet that man is a bit of a brute sometimes, thought Maria, and as she thought it, she felt his hand lying heavily on her knee.

He looked kind, peaceful, and exceedingly healthy. His light, calm eyes searched the faces of the people passing on the boulevard Montparnasse, and his huge hand lay possessively, heavy as lead, on her knee. Ridiculous sort of thing to do. Ridiculous, not frightening. Why frightening? She made a cautious but decided movement, and the hand was withdrawn. It's very cold here, said Heidler in his gentle voice. Let's go to the select bar, shall we? Doesn't he seem nice?

What a nice man. What a nice man. So we have this constant enigma, the enigma of, you know, John, touch of evil. Yeah. He was some kind of a man what does it matter what you say about people i love the idea of it being a self-portrait that's that really is gelling with me well now you've said that how can he know how can he know the ins and outs of equivocation

in the way that the narrator does unless he himself has privileged access to those ways of thinking. Yeah. It's almost like Patricia Highsmith kind of wrote him, in a way. You are a fan. You are a Highsmith admirer, aren't you? You said that. I don't want to get you started on the TV series.

Of what? Well, of Ripley? Yeah. With that guy in it? Yeah. So do you do you see a similarity between

Ford Maddox Ford and Highsmith then at least in The Good Soldier at least in The Good Soldier yeah I don't know enough of his work really other than this book

I see more of James in him or the other way around do you Henry James yeah John you were going to other way around. Do you, Henry James? Yeah. John, you were going to say you feel like there's some Henry James, but there isn't at the same time, right?

Yeah, well, I think the interesting thing is he bridged, didn't he, that kind of gap between Henry James and Conrad and the modernists. He was instrumental in publishing, you know, kind of a number of modernist writers. And this book often gets taught as a sort of modernist text, which is interesting in itself because it kind of passes as realism if you're reading it in one way. But then if you start to think about it

as not a realistic novel and you start to think about virginia wolf and joyce and in a monologue and and misdirection that brilliant phrase you used andy then you then you start to see that there's maybe a lot more going on than this than just telling this supposedly very sad story and i i also think that the the presentation of sex in the novel is pretty shocking uh for 1915 i mean it's very very direct i just got a tiny little bit to well it's not tiny it's worth reading i this this feels to me like it's... He just... This is so much, this voice. I'm not going to read it in American

because I now think it wasn't... He wasn't American. I now think it was full Mannix Ford. So I should probably do it in some kind of... Yeah. Bluffton Tufton kind of voice. I have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters. I mean that it is impossible to believe

in the permanence of man's or woman's love, or at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early passion. As I see it, at least with regard to a man, a love affair, a love for any definite woman, is something in the nature of a widening of the experience. With each new woman that a man is attracted to, there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture, all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love. All these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape

that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that voice supplying itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic. He wants to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background of the question of the sext instinct. I know very little, and I do not think that it counts for very much in a really great passion.

It can be aroused by such nothings, by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing, that I think it might be left out of the calculation. I don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. That seems to me to be a commonplace, and to be therefore a matter needing no comment at all, except you're commenting about it. It is a thing with all its accidents that must be taken for granted, as in a novel or a biography you take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some regularity but the real fierceness of desire the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man

is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves he desires to see with the same eyes to touch with the same sense of touch to hear with with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported for whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes. There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties, and that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid. We are all so alone. We all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. Oh, my God. Amazing.

Pretty good. Amazing. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. You didn't hear it, and it isn't sad. But other than that, I'll trust you all the way, yeah. But going back to your thing about, that's a novelist writing, isn't it? That's a writer writing. You don't need that to understand.

I mean, in fact, he's saying you don't need to understand what's happening between the characters. That's one of the things that makes this book so remarkable when you go back to it i think well uh we have to move on now because if we don't we won't have time for what i'm calling the good quiz uh i've got a quiz for you both yeah the idea is uh this book is called the good soldier and there are all sorts of books films uh events things called the good something or other and i'm gonna ask alex and john to name them and nikki i want you to keep score please between see how they do i think this is pretty easy but we'll see how we go uh alex here's the first one what good thing is this after her death eleanor shellstrop is welcomed to a heaven-like utopian afterlife designed

and run by the so-called architect Michael, but all is not as it seems. Now, I'm just going to be honest and say that I don't know the answer to that, but you kindly gave it to me backstage, so we can edit that little bit out. I'll just say, the good place. It is the good place. Amazing, ladies and gentlemen. John, reviewing the best restaurants, pubs and cafes in Great Britain since 1951. This popular gazetteer will no longer be published annually in print, but instead will henceforth be available as an app.

It's got to be The Good Food Guide. It is The Good Food Guide. No, no. No guide no no no no it was just the first one because i thought i wouldn't know any of the answers and i knew john would know the restaurants ones so that was fine uh alex oh god alex a 40 year old plastic designer quits the rat race and retreats to his detached residence in surbiton yes where he holds up with his wife and attempts to live a fully eco-fascist existence, rejecting everything from home comforts to modern medicine. Against their will, his neighbours become implicated in his midlife crisis. I see you're throwing the highbrow questions at me. I think it has to be The Good Life.

you're throwing the highbrow questions at me i think it has to be the good life john a uk-based political non-profit company which states its mission is to achieve change through legal means whose founder's first book bringing down goliath was published in 2023 and who at christmas 2021 killed a fox with a baseball bat. The Good... It's Julian... What's his name? It is. The Good... The Good Law Project. The Good Law Project. You received some help.

I did, sorry. Well done, though. Round of applause. Thank you. Alex, during the American Civil War, a man with no name murders a string of people for reasons which remain obscure but look fantastic. Is it the good, the bad and the ugly? It is the good, the bad and the ugly. Is that the American Civil War?

It's the American Civil War. Wow. You wouldn't know it, would you? But it is. It is the good, the bad and the ugly. Is that the American Civil War? Is the American Civil War? Well, you wouldn't know it, would you? But it is. John, a pub in Camden, seen as being central to the Britpop scene of the 1990s, frequented by members of Blur, Menswear, Amy Winehouse and others. Oh, God.

The Cape of Good Hope? No. Nicky, what is it? The Good Mixer. It's the Good Mixer. Yes. Bad luck. Right, Alex.

Which best-selling British novel, following the fortunes of a touring music hall party, was first published in 1929, won the James Tate Black Memorial Prize, has been adapted for the stage on four separate occasions for cinema twice for a television series in 1980 and has featured amongst others ronald harwood andre previn alan plater james judy dench and sir john gielgud wow i don't know but i want to see that that's it is one of the most it's such a perfect backlisted book because it was so famous for 50 years

and now is probably entirely forgotten. Do you know? No, I've got no idea. Does anyone know? It is The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley. Point for the audience. Thank you very much. Oh, wow.

Finally, John, this is a short excerpt from an American novel which won the National Book Award in 1964. Please name novel and author. The good die young, but I have been spared to build myself up so that I may end my life as good as gold. The senior dead will be proud of me. I will join the YMCA of the immortals. No. No.

Go on. Anyone? Not good as gold? Anyone else? Disappointing. Come on, backlisted listeners. It's Herzog by Saul Bellow Alex is there anything that we didn't talk about or anything we didn't get to say about the good soldier obviously there's loads because it's it's such a rich multi-faceted novel is there anything in particular that you would like to say to the audience about if they haven't read it why should they read it because every time you read it it's a different book and it is like use the word kaleidoscopic it's you

know it's labyrinthine it's just um it's haunted me all of these years and i think like i said during email i it's like a magic trick and no matter how many times i study it to try and work out how he did it i still can't so it's it's perfect i think how rare it is that a book is a shapeshifter like this i mean i can't think of a book that is quite matches it for for that ability to change. And you can see its influence everywhere. We were talking about, you know, you can't imagine. It's Julian Barnes' favourite novel.

You can hear it in Sense of an Ending. It's one of Ishiguro's favourite novels. You can feel it, that voice in Remains of the Day feels like it's kind of coming out of the same place. Kate Summerscale as well. It's a great favourite of hers, isn't it? Yeah. And so i'm going to ask each of you in turn as our final question is it deliberate is it this good deliberately you go first i think it has to be i think you know maybe it's more convincing as you said like

a self-portrait then it kind of makes sense the self-portrait of a man who is himself unreadable unknowable even to himself perhaps yeah yeah i i like that idea very much i like the idea i mean i do like the idea that the narrator is a is a murderer and by extension if it's a self-portrait, so is Ford Maddox Ford. Patricia Cornwall can do something good with that. I was about to say, it's all very secret, all of this, isn't it? Particularly the different identities and things. But I love the idea that, interestingly,

the thing that appealed to me when I read it in the 1980s and when I read it again this time is how brilliantly it represents the elusiveness of truth in writing a writer can only pretend that they are offering you the truth because the truth is not so simple a thing that it can be represented by one person's account. And for me, the strength of the novel, regardless of whether you think the narrator is an idiot or a dissembler or a murderer or whatever, the genius of the novel is to show you repeatedly that there's only, not even one version can be one version not one narrator cannot offer you one unambiguous take on a series of events i think i think that's absolutely right i think that going back to that intention question i think he intended it to be very good I think he intended it to be the best book he could write and it's curious to me that he it was the one of

All his books that was his favorite and it is the one with the exception of the parade's end Series like that still gets read but it is I think What you've just said is exactly the point is is that even if he intended it, he didn't intend. He can't control how much of himself is or isn't in that book. No writer can. The act of writing a book transforms the material. Well, I've got a surprise for you, John. He's here now.

He's here tonight. You know nothing of my work. How you get to stand on a stage and talk about it is a mystery to me. Thank you so much, everyone, for coming. And a special thanks, Alex Michelides, for kicking off this residency at Foils. We hope to be back here in a month to talk about Gawain and the Green Knight with members of the Backlisted family. We hope we'll see you again for that.

Tickets are available. Nicky says tickets are available. June the 12th, Wednesday. So thanks very much. Alex, thank you so much. John Mitchison, thank you so much. Andy Miller, thank you so much. Tess, thank you so much.

And thank you to our lovely audience for coming. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.