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Claude Houghton

I Am Jonathan Scrivener Paperback – April 9, 2013

by Claude Houghton (Author), Hugh Walpole (Preface), Michael Dirda (Foreword)

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"So remarkable in truth is this novel that I cannot understand why it is not universally known and admired." - Hugh Walpole

"I Am Jonathan Scrivener remains a tantalizing, highly diverting philosophical novel of rare elegance and wit." - Michael Dirda

James Wrexham is thirty-nine, lonely, and stuck in a dead-end job when he comes upon an advertisement for a position as secretary to Mr. Jonathan Scrivener. Much to his surprise, he is hired at a lavish salary despite never even meeting Scrivener, and he is told to take up residence at once in the flat of his new employer, who has suddenly disappeared. Mystified by Scrivener's strange conduct and desperate to learn something about him, it seems Wrexham will get the answers he seeks when Scrivener's friends begin to visit the flat: Pauline Mandeville, an ethereal beauty, Francesca Bellamy, a widow who may responsible for the death of her husband, Andrew Middleton, a disillusioned alcoholic, and Antony Rivers, a handsome playboy. But as each of them unfolds his story about Scrivener, it seems that none of them are describing the same person, though all are obsessed with finding him. Why has he hired Wrexham, and why does he seem to have thrust this unlikely group of people together? Is Scrivener engaged in an inscrutable experiment, or could he be laying some kind of trap? And will this enigmatic figure ever appear and say, "I am Jonathan Scrivener"?

Popular in his time for his psychological thrillers, Claude Houghton (1889-1961) was admired by writers as diverse as P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Miller, Hugh Walpole, and Graham Greene, but has fallen into neglect in the past half-century. This new edition restores his masterpiece I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930) to print and includes Walpole's introduction from the 1935 edition and an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning critic and Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda.

Print length

280 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Valancourt Books
Publication date

April 9, 2013
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.63 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1939140080
ISBN-13

978-1939140081
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Valancourt Books; Revised ed. edition (April 9, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1939140080
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1939140081
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.63 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,959,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #43,901 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #46,107 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #97,302 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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9 ratings

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Eclectic Reader

Great Writing & a Superb Psychological Thriller

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2013

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I Am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton begins enshrouded with the unknown and unlike peeling an onion layer by layer, the enigma confronting the novel's narrator, James Wrexham, who is hired to be a secretary to a man he never meets (Jonathan Scrivener), only becomes more and more complicated.

The construction of I Am Jonathan Scrivener is beautifully rendered and much like reading a mystery by Patricia Highsmith.

More than just a well-plotted mystery, the novel is commendably written and filled with remarkable psychological insight into the human psyche. Readers are likely to find themselves underlining passage after passage of amazing, thoughtful prose. Along with subtle references to Britain still recovering from World War I and the discomfort that all might still not be well in the world, it is with a growing sense of uneasiness that Houghton unfolds in almost Hitchcockian fashion the developments of both the book's plot and the characters. As things rapidly approach "a crisis" toward the end of I Am Jonathan Scrivener, Wrexham's conclusion about who his employer is and the mystery of the people who claim to be friends of Scrivener's (and who also all describe a totally different person) is quite remarkable, but nothing as compared to the novel's final paragraph which is the perfect bookend to the novel's portentous opening.

For lovers of distinctive mysteries filled with psychological acumen and exceptional writing, I Am Jonathan Scrivener simply should not be missed.

8 people found this helpful

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Pretty Sinister

The Metaphysics of Identity

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2013

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There is enough in this novel to recommend it as a work of insightful observations on loneliness and friendship, also as a genre novel that foreshadows contemporary paranoid thrillers of identity and betrayal.

The basic story sounds familiar to anyone well read in crime and detective fiction of the early 20th century. James Wrexham, after a period of dreary employment in a lawyer's office and a self-imposed solitary life with no real friendships, comes across a newspaper advertisement for a secretary and library cataloguer. He submits a rushed letter the content of which he later cannot recall and is surprised when he is offered the position outright with no interview and never having met his future employer. Houghton uses this advertisement gimmick only as a springboard from which to launch a story that deviates from any expected traditional mystery novel or tale of intrigue.

There are many mysteries that Wrexham faces in his new position. Why was he chosen? Why did Scrivener leave for Paris so abruptly? Why allow Wrexham complete access to Scrivener's house, his tailor, his friends? Is there some sort of ulterior motive in having the library catalogued? But soon these questions become less mysterious than the man himself. The story shifts into a metaphysical mystery about identity. For as Wrexham soon learns from a variety of friends and associates Jonathan Scrivener seems to be a man of multiple personalities. He is described as a perverse degenerate, a hedonistic adventurer, a misogynous and bitter misanthrope, a lighthearted and witty raconteur, a failed actor, brilliant artist who never reached his potential and so much more. Can he really be all of these at once? Or is he just a fraud? No one seems to really know who or what Jonathan Scrivener truly is. But Wrexham is determined to discover the real man among his many guises.

The book is not all sinister musings and melodramatic character revelations. Much to my surprise there were several scenes of absurd humor that came as an unexpected bonus. Wrexham meets the devil-may-care playboy Antony Rivers who takes hims to a Japanese restaurant. The variety of strange foods Wrexham is served is described with grotesque metaphors like a soup that "had long weeds in it which looked rather like serpents who had died in youth" and that "tasted exactly like the old Aquarium at Brighton used to smell." Later Wrexham reports on an argument between a bus passenger and bus driver over the difference of one penny in the fare which reaches a ridiculous conclusion.

Sharp readers may catch on much sooner than Wrexham or the other characters as to Scrivener's exact intentions. The title coupled with a passing reference to Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde may lead some to jump to conclusions about the solution of the core mystery. Houghton, however, has something less sensational in mind.

3 people found this helpful

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still searching

Extraordinary, exquisite, revelatory

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2014

I stumbled across this quite by accident and regard the incident as one of those happy accidents that now and then occur. The protagonist is not the eponymous Scrivener but the man employed to be his secretary, James Wrexham. The book was released in 1930 and its author, Claude Houghton, should now, if justice be served, enjoy a richly deserved renaissance in the minds of the reading public.

After living a humdrum existence into his thirties having been left little or no money in his recently deceased father’s will, the public school educated Wrexham goes to work in the offices of a small provincial town’s solicitor’s partnership. His life is one of self-selected solitude. Although he occupies a single room in the home of the senior partner, Petersham, he finds he has nothing in common with the older man and keeps very much to himself preferring to live a ‘life of the mind’. However, after existing some years in this condition he happens to notice an ad in the Times, for a private secretary, to which he eagerly responds although with little hope of success. The job is to catalogue the library of a certain Jonathan Scrivener. To his great surprize he receives a favourable response to his application and goes to live in his new employer’s fashionable London apartment. What is odd and constitutes the central plot device is that Scrivener leaves the country without ever meeting the man who is going to occupy his flat. What is more, the salary he offers is more than generous for the time and, on top of this, Scrivener provides Wrexham with the name of his tailor with instructions to visit him whenever he feels it appropriate to do so with Scrivener covering all costs.

Soon after taking up residence, Wrexham begins to receive visits from several of Scrivener’s friends and through them endeavours to find out something about his enigmatic employer. Throughout the remainder of the book the question cannot help forming in the minds of both the protagonist and the reader with increasing insistence: who is Jonathan Scrivener? Although their accounts differ significantly in certain respects each of Scrivener’s friends provide snippets of information about him that allow Wrexham to gradually form a picture. He is left in no doubt that each of them, in their own way; believe that Scrivener is a remarkable man, with extraordinary qualities.

The book provides an evocative portrait of London between the wars, and the preoccupations of the middle classes, in the lead up to a second ‘Armageddon’. The prose is exquisite and, although vastly different in tone and accomplishment, there are echoes of a significantly inferior work published almost thirty years later: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, in which a similar question to that posed above, is continuously asked throughout; ‘who is John Galt?’ Likewise, Jeffrey Ford’s excellent ‘The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque’, is also brought to mind, in which an artist is asked to paint a portrait without ever seeing the face of his subject; merely relying on the image formed within him based upon their conversations during sittings.

If you want to give yourself a treat buy and read this book: once taken up you will find it hard to put down.

2 people found this helpful

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JMaxfield

A novel that holds a mirror to it's readers face and asks them to self reflect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2017

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I read this book because I am a keen reader of crime & mystery classics and also I had heard it was a lost or little read masterpiece. I have absolutely enjoyed reading this book but please do not be fooled by the other reviews - this book is almost totally dedicated to discussing philosophical questions relating to societal norms and conformity and/or non-conformity to our type that we are born and raised into. Although the book has a mystery as it's basis (trying to find out who Jonathan Scrivener is and why he has befriended and employed various people) - this basis is only used as a frame in which to discuss various personality types and to get the reader to self reflect upon him/herself - the entire middle section and much of the later part of the book is taken up with this quest. Yes the book is interesting and I found myself reflecting upon my own personality - however the mystery part is at best just a device in which to present a book that would normally be a dry and difficult to read factual book - so a crafty idea to write it as a novel but one that works well. If you are thinking of reading this book because you enjoy mysteries, you might be very disappointed - especially after the first third of the book as this book is as much about yourself as it about the characters you find within it. I would give this book 8 out of 10.

One person found this helpful

oldmolviejunkie

Another Unusual Book from Claude Houghton

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2017

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Very clever, high brow book. Intensely cerebral. Language is much more florid that I Was Ivor Trent. Will definitely seek out more Houghton. This book is not for people who enjoy an psychological challenge and enriching their vocabulary.

Harry Lyons

Hard to Put Down!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2014

Verified Purchase

One of most brilliant stories I've ever read. Lost writer to the 21 century world and it's a shame. This publication is very well produced and it's great to see the book back in stock. Heartily recommended. You'll find it hard to put down!

One person found this helpful

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