Customer Reviews

The Unbearable Bassington

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Unbearable Bassington centers on Francesca Bassington, a woman obsessed with protecting her possessions, and her son Comus, a wise-cracking, irresponsible, and shallow young man who simultaneously charms and offends everyone with whom he comes in contact. Francesca has affection for her son, but wishes he could be remade as a responsible member of society, especially where such responsibility can lead to Francesca's continued well-being. Comus, however, manages both purposely and accidentally to thwart his mother's wishes, and in the end is sent into exile in Africa, where it is hoped he will make a career. Secondary characters abound, most notably Courtney Youghal, a mediocre but flashy politician with whom Comus has a shallow friendship, and who becomes Comus's rival for the hand of the wealthy Elaine de Frey. Francesca disapproves of Courtney, yet it is clear she wishes that her son were more like him. Ironically, although Comus's main shortcoming seems that he's an idler, he is no more so than his mother and her circle. It seems more to the point to say that Comus doesn't idle in the proper way.
Most of the book is a setup for the last few chapters, which deal with Comus's exile, and which are poignant in the best sense of the word. Essentially, Comus is doomed by his own nature, which will not allow him, as an adult, to fit into the society in which he was raised. I take strong issue with the idea, put forth by the previous reviewer, that Comus is Dorian Gray-like. The comparison is absurd. Comus is merely a puckish boy who doesn't fit, and so is sent away to be forgotten.

The book is a fairly complex study of human motivation, although it is somewhat undercut by Saki's need to clutter the text with political and cultural details that detract from its basic themes. Also present are Saki's ubiquitious bons mots which, while charming in his short stories, become tiresome as the book goes on. This carping aside, it is an insightful look at middle-class England in the waning days of the empire, just prior to the outbreak of World War I.

I think it's also something for us to read today, when perhaps our children aren't "achieving" as we think they should. That's why I reread it, and I'm glad I did.

Stories are typical of Saki. Extremely humourus with an underlying bite ridiculing prevalent pretensions and beliefs. Languages is long winded yet entertaining. A pleasure to read.

I turned to Saki after giving up on Ronald Firbank, and the contrast is instructive. In any Firbank, camp novelties abound (e.g., the British consul named Sir Something Somebody) yet they are unsupported by anything like a story, so in time the reader is driven away as if he were served bones without meat at a swank restaurant. Saki offers everything Firbank does not, and in his minute, satiric observance of the English upper class, he is the heir to Oscar Wilde. Saki rejects the phony moralism of "Dorian Gray" for the untroubled insouciance of Wilde's story "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime." The result is "The Unbearable Bassington," a rare gem among Edwardian novels. In this teeming, perfect work, Saki not only inherits the mantle of Wilde; he trumps him decisively.

Start with a little perseverance. Chapter One of "Bassington" is tedious, unfocused, and discouraging, but get to the end of it and you are rewarded by Chapter Two, so alarmingly pungent it may be the finest quantum of prose in Saki's entire output. After that, the delights never end. A treasure-trove of epigrams twinkles in every fold of this marvelous story, a portrait of Edwardians as knowing as anything Wilde ever wrote. But we are shocked to discern real, pulsing lives behind Saki's screen of artifice. Wilde never cared about his characters as much as the language used to tell about them, whereas Saki cares about both characters and language, and delivers grandly on both.

I notice other reviewers here have gone into great detail about the plot and I can't do any better than they have done. This is a marvelous book. What I will say instead is that I was in supreme withdrawal mode from having finished JEEVES & WOOSTER by Wodehouse and then all of MAPP & LUCIA by Benson. These three, Wodehouse, Benson and Saki, were all English authors writing early in the twentieth century. (You can download some of their work for free in the public domain over at Project Guttenberg online.)

What sets all three authors immediately apart from anyone I've read in the last decade is that they can really write. Every word is well chosen. If these works were edited by anyone else, they were edited superbly (alas, a disappearing art in our own time). Also, all three were extremely witty and knew how to use irony as a literary device. All three also supremely understood the fine art of characterization. I can't even think of an author to compare them to who is writing today and that is not a compliment to the present day. The only other writer they remind me of is Jane Austen but more with her idiosyncratic characters than with her romantic ones (so more Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine and Mrs. Bennett instead of Darcy and Elizabeth).

Christopher Hitchens wrote a wonderful free article online about Saki over at the THE ATLANTIC. I highly recommend you go over there and read it. It will give you all the guidance you need about experiencing this wonderful author. Just put these words in the Google search engine: Saki Atlantic Christopher Hitchens.

Comus Bassington and his mother aren't as rich as they seem and struggle to maintain a place in fashionable Edwardian society. Francesca tries to match her son to a suitable heiress, but Comus's irrascable self ruins her schemes.And then his friend Youghal wins the battle for the hand of Elaine de Frey...
Saki's cutting humour and satire is as savage and funny as ever as he caricatures the sensibilities of the Edwardian middle class.
As someone who has read all of Saki's short stories, it was a treat to find this-his only novel, although I found it poorly constructed as a novel and a bit of a hotch potch, starting off humourous and ending rather depressingly as a reflection on the misplaced importance of money and society and its ultimate fate.
There is also a completely mystifying chapter where Elaine meets the mysterious and worldly Keriway that is just a dead end with no relevence to the story-I had half expected him to sweep in at the last to save Elaine from her two ghastly suitors,but he fails to reappear. Also, we are overloaded with characters and caricatures that fit wonderfully into short stories but sit rather awkwardly against the plot in a novel.
Despite all the flaws, I was still delighted to read a fresh Saki work, though I would recommend it as something to read after you've read the short stories; its more of an afterwards than introduction to Saki's genius, but it still contains plenty of the humour that went on to inspire the 60's satarists of the absurd such as Peter Cook, David frost and Monty Python.

I turned to Saki after giving up on Ronald Firbank, and the contrast is instructive. In any Firbank, camp novelties abound (e.g., the British consul named Sir Something Somebody) yet they are unsupported by anything like a story, so in time the reader is driven away as if he were served bones without meat at a swank restaurant. Saki offers everything Firbank does not, and in his minute, satiric observance of the English upper class, he is the heir to Oscar Wilde. Saki rejects the phony moralism of "Dorian Gray" for the untroubled insouciance of Wilde's story "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime." The result is "The Unbearable Bassington," a rare gem among Edwardian novels. In this teeming, perfect work, Saki not only inherits the mantle of Wilde; he trumps him decisively.

Start with a little perseverance. Chapter One of "Bassington" is tedious, unfocused, and discouraging, but get to the end of it and you are rewarded by Chapter Two, so alarmingly pungent it may be the finest quantum of prose in Saki's entire output. After that, the delights never end. A treasure-trove of epigrams twinkles in every fold of this marvelous story, a portrait of Edwardians as knowing as anything Wilde ever wrote. But we are shocked to discern real, pulsing lives behind Saki's screen of artifice. Wilde never cared about his characters as much as the language used to tell about them, whereas Saki cares about both characters and language, and delivers grandly on both.

Saki's sardonic insight and exquisite sense of irony don't work quite as perfectly in a novel or play as when contained in a short story, but nonetheless this is a wonderful book and well worth reading.