The Severed Head (Acting Edition)

Like Martin, I don't know what to think. I started this book almost by accident and finished it by compulsion. The writing is wonderful. It's the plot I don't know what to think about. When, in an early scene, a sword shows up, I wondered whose head will be cut off with it. Chekhov would insist that the sword be used and the title suggested how. I now think that the severed head refers to how distant the intellectual point of view is from the reality of the human comedy or tragedy or what ever its genre. Either that, or the process of separating ones reason from morality. Somehow this is connected with psychoanalysis, that being the psychoanalysis of the 60s when this was published. Maybe Judaism is involved in this separation as well. It symbolizes a disturbing foreignness, an ugly reality that must continually be fled with convention or alcohol or else denied. Honor Klein is at home in it (if she's at home anywhere) but who else would be willing to join her? Which will win: civilization, or it's discontents?

When Georgie's hair shows up in a box, I figured her head couldn't be far behind. Honor Klein (whose name always made me think of Anna Freud crossed with Melanie Klein) describes herself as a severed head late in the book, she meaning it as an object used in divination by alchemists, an object of fascination but always alien. She seems to be always unknown, Never reacting in a conventional way and thus impossible to think about in a worldly context. A relationship with her would not be about happiness as a worldly one would be.
If it turns out the sword is never actually used (I don't feel like spoiling this), since it appears as a symbol in dreams and elsewhere, the idea of it is used so Chekhov can't complain. (In Iris Murdoch's The Bell, the idea of the bell is much used too and when it is told to predict death, I kept wondering who would die.)

Martin wouldn't know what to think because his thinking is severed from his feeling. Martin spends most of the book avoiding actual choices and actions. When he does make decisions, other than those forced on him, it's usually with the excuse of being drunk and they are often violent ones. For much of the plot he is either submitting to humiliations or plotting to escape from them. In the end--well, you read it and see if you know what to say.

n.b. A ‘no star’ rating for books I review does not imply criticism—I rarely give ratings, as giving stars is an unhelpfully blunt instrument and all too often involves comparing apples with oranges.returnreturnHaving tried once to get to grips with Iris Murdoch via 'Henry and Cato' (left aside after initial enthusiasm turned to a sense that it was all too over-indulgent), 'A Severed Head' was my next attempt. It is a comedy of sorts, though it does call to mind an observation about Susan Hayward that “her lightest touch as a comedienne could stun a horse”. The narrator, Martin Lynch-Gibbon, starts off in a state of over-privileged bliss, having both a beautiful, motherly wife, Antonia, and a beautiful mistress, Georgie, to whom he can be comfortably condescending as she is the younger by a significant degree, and loves him deeply. Even on his own admission, Martin is not expected to pay for his emotional and sexual shenanigans. returnreturnThen Antonia starts the ball rolling by announcing she is in love with someone else, and like dominoes falling, everyone turns out to be in love with, or at least sleeping with, everyone else. Martin spends the novel drunk and being plunged into barely-controllable reactions to a series of almost contradictory revelations, as his circle of intimates engage in a sort of sexual musical chairs. Antonia loves Anderson, then he is “a demon”; Antonia loves Alexander, Martin’s brother; Palmer is in bed, if not love, with his half-sister Honor, with whom Martin finally… and then Georgie… then Alexander… It all happens at a cracking, Benny-Hill-chase speed; every time Martin sobers up, there is some new revelation to send him spinning away. returnreturnThere is a sort of Molly Keane-esque grotesquerie about the whole business (and an Anglo-Irish connection: Martin feels a sentimental attachment to “that poor bitch of a country” in which both he and the author were born). Honor is an anthropologist, and is the severed head of the title (though happily, only metaphorically). Martin, having once attacked Honor in a cellar, later literally prostrates himself in front of her; I am still unsure if this was intended to be as funny as it was. Georgie makes the wonderfully Gothic gesture of sending her hair to Martin, signalling a suicide attempt. The characters take themselves terribly seriously, and are very deftly made believable, despite being on a spectrum careening between Bertie Wooster and some hyper-articulate character from a Jacobean tragedy. Martin is bearable because he at least admits that he wants nothing more than to have his cake and eat it. Georgie is the best of the bunch, and puts an unerring finger on aspects of Martin’s character that he has the grace to acknowledge he had hoped she would not notice.returnreturnThat Honor is Jewish seems to be mentioned at every hand’s turn, particularly when describing how ugly she is, with her “sallow Jewish mask” of a face, and black greasy hair, an emphasis that is unpleasant and startling. It seems a shame, too, that Georgie, who seems a decent sort of person, is caught up in this farago with these selfish, emotionally unstable people. She is incapable of being without a man for more than two minutes at a stretch but unlike Antonia, does not seem happy with any of them. Taken as a singularity, rather than as part of the cast, Georgie is less on a merry-go-round and more circling the drain. returnDespite the tortuous intertwinings of dreadful characters, the prose is very clear and lovely, and it makes for an unexpectedly enjoyable read. It is a short book, too, which stands it in good stead since a lengthy account of the inner lives of this charmless crew would pall quickly. Despite all of the psychoanalytical talk, and Martin’s repeated attempts to understand and articulate himself and his reactions—and, in fairness, to behave well—no-one seems to understand anything new by the end of it all; they return to the same old posturings, just in someone else’s bed.