The Prestigious Pantomime

I bought The Prestige on a whim during The Great Borders Purge. I had seen the movie and liked it. However it sat for months on my shelf untouched, so I suggested it for the Book Brigade to force myself to read it. This review is mostly spoiler free. As I said, I saw the movie first so my expectations were high. The book begins with a dull character in modern times, he was pointless and vague. I waved him away as necessary to the introducing the epistolary part of the novel. Then the real story started.

The first section of the story is told through the autobiography of one of the main characters, Borden. After a dry, lengthy depiction of his childhood the Feud is introduced. It is started accidentally by Borden who does something well meaning and seemingly harmless, and after Angier retaliates with a few small pranks it feels like it should be over. The bulk of this narrative is concerned with Borden giving you his theory on magic and not revealing to his secret which he has oh so cleverly kept for all these years. The most interesting bits of this section were when Borden explains the pact between audience and magician, and then goes on to tell you that this pact is in play in his memoirs, because he is lying to support an illusion. The parts where the illusion cracks and the lie shines through are marvelous, and if you don’t know the answer to the riddle you probably will think Borden quite mad. But then for absolutely no reason they return to the feud, a feud devoid of any cause for malice or anger. And their feud is mild, apathetic almost, they play a few tricks on each other. Borden is petty and obsessive, but seems too self-interested to plausibly continue antagonizing Angier without personal gain. They seem to be feuding merely to entertain themselves rather than out of the voracious spite they both claim.

When we hear Angier’s side of the story we are given a little justification for the feud, but he responds un-viciously, as if he does not really want to cause trouble. Angier at first seems to be a nicer person. He is gullible and earnest and a little weak minded, this sometimes masquerades as innocence and sometimes as pure idiocy. He is not particularly angered by Borden’s continued attacks and at one point attempts to abandon the feud. I suppose the real problem is that the characters never drive the feud and so it doesn’t really feel like a feud at all. When it finally ends, it is merely by accident. The characters simply go along with the events of the story instead of being the ones moving it.

Then there’s Olive Wenscombe/Olivia Svenson. She manages to completely ruin the small amount of respectability remaining to both of the main characters. While both of the main characters are built mostly on flaws, they share the good quality of being lovingly devoted to their respective wives, and you hope for happy redemption or reconciliation of some kind. But then Olive Wenscombe/Olivia Svenson comes along and deprives them, one after the other, of their only admirable quality. I don’t mind flawed characters as long as their flaws are there to shape them into something interesting and propel their story, I don’t even mind entirely rotten characters who are only self serving, but I do mind characters who are just pathetic and despicable out of a lack of concern or purpose. They are just following the story, they have no real motivations. It is the same problem with the feud, the characters are not weakly written, but they are weak, weak in will, weak in action. They do not stand for anything, they are not trying to accomplish anything they merely exist.

In between all this we are taken back to the perspective of the characters in modern times from the introduction. It seems like a completely irrelevant interruption until something truly horrific and shocking springs out of the middle. It is so sudden, so jarring, and so pointless, and so utterly awful. This thing is made doubly horrifying and by the fact that it has no discernable purpose. When we are taken to the modern characters at the very end of the novel, we continue in this extremely disturbing vein, slowly piling on the creepiness until at last the Author leaves on the last page with nothing but sheer terror.

Conclusion: While there are many things that irritate me about this novel: the fact that (spoilers) Angier’s mustache is never mentioned until we are introduced to a roomful of his frozen corpses, the Author giving long-winded accounts of each characters’ childhood as part of their introduction, and the failure by the Author to piece together any of the themes he laid out; the two mysteries are very masterfully and elegantly handled*, even through the difficult epistolary medium, which sometimes strains the narrative. But this novel loses out of sheer disturbing creepiness.

*Another high point is Hesketh Unwin. A background character if ever I saw one, but he wins the Most Awesome Name Ever award.

The Illusion of Prestige

                 I started The Prestige thinking it would be pure fiction. That is,  I thought it would describe the life and actions of made up people doing made-up, but presumably plausible, things. Halfway through the book I had established it in my mind as the tale of the two squabbling magicians: a drama mixed with a little mystery and carrying the possibility of romance in the inevitable reconciliation of the two families. Instead The Prestige is a science fiction novel in the early strain – more the horror of Frankenstein* than the sociology of the Foundation series – but this isn't revealed to the unsuspecting reader until they are more than halfway through the book. Before that they have to meet the main characters, which takes longer than normal since the book is made up of five acts with each character in charge of introducing themselves. This was slightly different than normal and, as a stylistic choice, handled perfectly. In the average book we are given only one point of view, and though this limits us a little if we are reading a political novel, we can still tell what's happening because, though the characters color things a bit, they do not lie about actual events. But here the  characters with the largest presence, the magicians Alfred Bolden and Rupert Angier, twist facts and events to suit themselves. It's the perfect format for deception.

The widely different ways in which events are revealed does little to instill confidence in the narrators' sanity, but Bolden and Angier would be candidates for institutionalization anyway in my book. Only a dozen pages into Bolden's account I had already committed him to the loony bin due to his bizarre use of grammar and habit of, shall I say, talking to himself. Then I guessed his secret and had to grudgingly admit he was awful clever. In the end, however, it is  his precious secret which condemns him. He makes quite a lot of it in his own account – now I show you my hands, and all that – which give you a hint of his megalomania (I don't use this word lightly here, he really has a disturbing need to be superior, and his secret is how he satisfies this need). Bolden says he had thought of his marvelous act, and therefore his deception,  while still at home. But for a man to continue the joke of a sixteen year old boy? It's not funny Bolden, just ask your wife. His wife. Oh, wait.

Not that Angier is any better. From the start he only seems slow and a little Monkish – the New York variety, not the kind that meditates. I actually felt for him great sympathy at first, because of the consequences of Bolden's actions against him and because, naturally, of his great happiness. What can I say, I find happily married men attractive. But there's nothing more pathetic than a happiness that ends, and Angier proves that to really mess up a life you have to be the one living it. Questions of morality aside – neither of these men are particularly admirable in regards to their wives, but you feel it more with Angier because Bolden is so deucedly distant –  I can not shake the feeling that Angier is a small man who really would have been better at home collecting orchids, or whatever it is harmless members of the British aristocracy do. He proves me wrong not when he comes up with the (ludicrous) idea of In a Flash - the idea which completely dissolves the solid base of an interesting, if not endearing, fiction –  but with how he handles the prestige. It makes my skin crawl with his callousness. You see, the word "prestige" in the title is actually used as a noun by Priest.  It's where he reveals that his drama is actually a thriller. Prestige is a horrid euphemism which my dictionary tells me is perfectly fitting. Prestige: a feeling based on the favorable perception of another's achievement. A word deriving most recently from the French word for illusion, but ultimately from the Latin praestgiae, conjuring trick. It is through his prestige(s) that Angier gains his prestige, and then, through fate's justice, losses all ability to enjoy it.

                      This brings me to a point where I must confess my own short comings: I like happy endings. Not only do I like them, but I feel that 99% of all books, movies, or TV shows that end tragically could have been saved with some unicorns and pixie dust. I would rather have a deus ex machina than that strange feeling of the unresolved. To me, a story that does not end happily – or, in the case of science fiction, in some state of contentment – can have no real resolution. A book without resolution is a book without end, and a book without end is like a hang nail that's long enough to catch painfully on your clothes and hair but too short to easily cut. Without completely spoiling the book, for the greatest pleasure you'll get from it is in discovering its secrets,  I can tell you that, though both Angier and Bolden die, there is no reason to conclude that any of them are actually dead.** They are both, however, perfectly wretched and twisted by their bitterness. Sunshine? The book ends at night. Rainbows? At night, in the snow. Warm fuzzys? We leave Kate and Andrew standing in the door way with the physical equivalent of a corpse. Sorry Priest. I enjoyed reading about magic and the world of magicians, and I'm really looking forward to seeing your illusions on screen, but your characters weren't very nice chaps and Kate, easily my favorite character, makes no sense unless she knows far more than she is telling. Did you mean to end the book there, or did you just run out of twists? 

Originality: Pretty good. 

Characters: They seem nice and normal, but it's all smoke and mirrors. 

Plot: Slow to start, fast to end. Tied up with a bow and then ripped to shreds in the blender and used as wet confetti.

Content: I'm citing this book for non-descriptive nudity and inducing horror without warning***

* Okay, this really isn't fair to Frankenstein, which is a legitimate look at society in its own right, but the parallels between Frankenstein and The Prestige are overwhelming.  Even the monster's mournful "He is dead who brought me into being" and the following attempt at suicide is mirrored in Preist's books - only, Shelly was content to have made her point while I'm not quite sure what Preist's point even was.  

** Okay, I admit, this is my favorite thing from the book:  "Now I show you my hands . . . . I roll up my sleeves . . . ."  

*** Sudden genre switching is one of the cardinal sins of writing, right up there with having characters act out of character. 

Welcome Internet!

Sixer: Hello World, and welcome to Sock and Spoons.

Bevity: The.

Sixer: Yes, the Socks and Spoons.

Bevity: Brigade.

Sixer: Whatever. Anyway, welcome to our humble outpouring of . . .

Bevity: Geniusness. And, can we explain that this is a book blog?

Sixer: Yes, I was just getting to that. Our plan is to read a book a month - and watch a gazilion movies - and then review them.

Bevity: Here's a real introduction: Welcome Internet! These are the fabulous and spectacularly intelligent musings of Bevity and Sixer on various novels and films of interest. We will be reading and reviewing monthly for at least until we get bored.

Sixer: Or realize we're boring. So, do you want to intorduce our first victim, or shall I?

Bevity: You've already read it, so you do it.

Sixer: Oh, I wasn't really going to admit to that. But oh well, fine. We chose January's book based on Bevity's recommendation, since the movie is - apparently - briliant.

Bevity: Chritopher Nolan never fails to amaze. Christopher Nolan is Pixar for grownups. He's the writer-director of Inception, Batman Begins, Dark Knight . . . .

Sixer: Geek. Moving on. After years of ripping apart movies which failed to live up to the books they were based on, we might have actually found one that improves upon its source material. I don't know, I've only just read the book and haven't actually watched the movie yet. But I'm really hoping the movie is better. Really, really, really, hoping.

Bevity: I guess we'll just have to see. I just want to clarify that not all the movies we review will be based on the book of the month. Also not all posts will be based in logic or have anything to do with what we've just said.