What makes a Novel Political?
It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his
chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass
doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from
entering along with him….
[final paragraph]
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the
victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
George Orwell, 1984 [1948]
He was a big fellow, looking seriously pale on the streets of Harlem in deep summer. I
am small and not so dark, not very threatening to Caucasians; I do not strut my stuff.
We shook hands. My inability to recall that particular moment is disappointing; the
handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics. I’ve seen him do it two million times
now, but I couldn’t tell you how he does it, the right-handed part of it—the strength, quality and
duration of it, the rudiments of pressing the flesh. I can, however, tell you a lot about what he
does with his other hand. He is a genius with it.
Joe Klein [Anonymous], Primary Colors (1996)
Chapter I. In Which the reader is introduced to a man of humanity
Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting
alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P________ in Kentucky.
There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be
discussing some subject with great earnestness.
For convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two gentlemen. (Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852)
The characters in this book are fictitious. The historical circumstances which determined
their actions are real. The life of the man N.S. Rubashov is a synthesis of the lives of a number of
men who were victims of the so-called Moscow Trials. Several of them were personally known to
the author. This book is dedicated to their memory.
Paris October 1938-April 1940.
The First Hearing
The cell door slammed behind Rubashov.
He remained leaning against the door for a few seconds, and lit a cigarette. On the bed to
his right lay two fairly clean blankets , and the straw mattress looked newly filled. The wahsbasin to his left had no plug, but the tap functioned…So far, everything was in order.
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1941)
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested
on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village
by throwing Amalinze the Cat.
….
[final paragraph]
As [The Commissioner] walked back to the court he thought about [his] book.
Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and
hanged himself would make interesting reading. On e could almost write a whole chapter on him.
Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to
include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book,
after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1959)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune,
must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering the
neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is
considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
“My dear Mr Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield
Park is let at last?”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, (1811)
The Nellie, a crusing yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails and was at
rest. The lood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river the
only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide…..
[first line of dialogue] “And this also,” said Marlowe suddenly, “has been one of the dark
places of the earth.”
When the author of this narrative was collecting his data in the homeland of
his hero, Nikola Suhaj the Invulnerable, he heard the testimony of a great
number of respectable and trustworthy citizens who had known Suhaj personally.
He had no reason to doubt their story: Suhaj (who had robbed the rich and given
to the poor, and who never, except in self-defense or out of just revenge, had
killed a fellow man) had been rendered invulnerable by a green bough which he
had waved about, warding off gendarmes' bullets as a farmer on a July day might
shoo the swarming bees. Ivan Olbracht, Nikola the Outlaw, (1933)
The story that I am about to tell, a story born in doubt and perplexity, has
only the misfortune (some call it the fortune) of being true: it was recorded
by the hands of honorable people and reliable witnesses. But to be true in the
way its author dreams about, it would have to be told in Romanian, Hungarian,
Ukrainian, or Yiddish; or, rather, in a mixture of all these languages.
Danilio Kis, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, (1976)
The Hollow Men (1925)
T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
It was in this darkness that abruptly, with many loud noises, we stopped. There were
shouts from the barge, the dugouts with us, and from many parts of the steamer. Young
men with guns had boarded the steamer and tried to take her over. But they had failed;
one young man was bleeding on the bridge above us. The fat man the captain, remained
in charge of his vessel. We learned that later. At the time what we saw was the steamer
searchlight, playing on the riverbank, playing on the passenger barge, which had snapped
loose and was drifting at an angle through the water hyacinths at the edge of the river.
The searchlight lit up the barge passengers who, behind bars and wire guards, as yet
scarcely seemed to understand that they were adrift. Then there were no gunshots. The
searchlight was turned off; the barge was no longer to be seen. The steamer started up
again and moved without lights downt he river, away from the area of battle. The air
would have been full of moths and flying insects. The searchlight, while it was on, had
shown thousands, white in the white light.
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River final lines (1978)
It was, gentleman, after a long absence—seven years to be exact, during which time I was
studying in Europe—that I returned to my people. I learnt much and much passed me
by—but that’s another story. The important thing is that I returned with a great yearning
for my people in that small village at the bend of the Nile. For seven years I had longed
for them, had dreamed of them, and it was an extraordinary moment when I at last found
myself standing amongst them. They rejoiced at having me back and made a great fuss,
and it was not long before I felt as though a piece of ice were melting inside fo me, as
though I were some frozen substance on which the sun had shone—that life warmth of
the tribe which I had lost for a time in the land “whose fishes die of the cold.” My ears
had become used to their voices, my eyes grown accustomed to their forms. Because of
having thought about them during my absence, something rather like fog rose up between
me and them the first instant I saw them.
Tayeb Al-Salih, Season of Migrations to the North (1967, in Arabic)