P.D. James

photo by Clare T. Walker

I went to my mom’s house unannounced, as I am wont to do, and found that she was out, as she is wont to be.

No matter. Being English, like my mom, I put the kettle on for a cup of tea and went in search of a book to read while I waited for her to come home.

I picked up Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Not the sort of thing I’d normally be interested in, but at the time I figured it was better than nothing.

I enjoyed Bridget’s New Year’s Resolutions and Chapter One enough to bring the book home and add it to my stack o’ books, teetering alongside the other books I was reading at the time, including P.D. James’s Children of Men (1992).

As I read on, it occurred to me that these two books, even though they differ widely in genre, style, and intended audience, actually have quite a lot in common.

Each book chronicles about one year of elapsed time: Bridget’s fictional diary begins on January 1 and ends the day after Christmas, and P.D. James also begins her book with a January 1^st journal entry by the main character, Theo Faron. Both contain first person point-of-view elements (Bridget Jones more than Children of Men) Both are intensely personal, providing the reader with access to the innermost and secret thoughts of the main character.

Some major differences, of course: Fielding’s main character, Bridget, is feckless, stupid and hilariously funny. James’s main character, Theo, is thoughtful, intelligent and serious.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a romantic comedy that ends with Bridget in a relationship with a good man instead of the insufferable twit she’d been after for the past 11 months.

Children of Men is a dystopian novel about the end of humanity…and its new beginning…amid murder, mayhem, mass euthanasia, betrayal, and hopelessness.

As I read Bridget Jones’s Diary, I laughed out loud at Bridget’s antics and at Fielding’s inimitable turn of phrase. Bridget is a comic masterpiece who describes her misadventures with hilarious honesty. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and eats too much, and constantly obsesses about how much she drinks, smokes, and eats, continually makes resolutions to improve herself, but never, ever does. She berates herself for sleeping with her boss, vows not to do it again, but does it again many times over. She vows to stop being late for work, but that very morning doesn’t get out of the house until 10:30. She is so lacking in self-knowledge that she turns a sensible meal of shepherd’s pie for a few friends into a gourmet meal for 16 that was to have concluded with Grand Marnier soufflés, but ten minutes before her guests were due to arrive she had stepped in the dinner and she still hadn’t dried her hair.

Details may vary, but is this not a description of just about everyone’s life? Including mine? The struggle with vice, bad habits, laziness, inconstancy, habitual sin. The waffling back and forth from an exalted view of ourselves that bites off more than anyone could possibly chew to wallowing in self-pity as we watch stupid YouTube videos or doom-scroll on our smartphones.

Bridget has little to live for except for those few dropped pounds on the scale, that evening at the pub with her friends, the momentary excitement and comfort of sex with someone new.

Bridget is fictional, but, I wonder: how could the Gospel of Jesus Christ reach someone like her in the real world? She knows that her life is meaningless and pathetic and she longs for something noble and sublime. Yet, I have a feeling that if she ever met a real Christian who tried to share the Gospel with her, she would smile politely while inwardly cringing, and try to extricate herself from the encounter as quickly as possible.

In Children of Men, the entire human race has become sterile. No babies have been born for 25 years. The people of this world know that they are the last of their kind and they believe that without the future promised by the presence of children in the world, life is meaningless. P.D. James constructs a terrifying dystopia around this idea and answers the question of how a society without God would contemplate its own demise. Life in such a society is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan i. xiii. 9 by Thomas Hobbes). The aged demonstrate their hopelessness by mass suicide. The young demonstrate theirs by acting out in anger and in reckless, indiscriminate violence.

If the fertility crisis James creates in her fictional future were ever to come true in the real world, I have no doubt that secular human society would deteriorate in much the way it does in her book, because in some ways her dystopia is already here. Euthanasia of the aged is practiced regularly in the Netherlands and they are contemplating it in rapidly aging Japan. In some countries the number of abortions exceeds the number of live births. The terminally-ill and severely brain-damaged are put to death every day in this country, although mostly without the furor surrounding the 2005 death-by-starvation of Terry Schiavo. In many parts of the world, violent lawlessness is commonplace and on the rise.

I think—I hope–people of faith would handle news of the end of the world differently, just as I hope people of faith are able to find meaning in everyday life the way Bridget Jones is not.

My pastor is fond of saying, “Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you’re going to be right.” One of the reasons I’m profoundly un-interested in “end-times” predictions, doomsdays, reported appearances of the anti-Christ, and so on, is because the timing of the world’s ending doesn’t really matter: each one of us is already hurtling toward our own personal apocalypse (from the Greek word meaning “to reveal,” “to unveil”). True, we must always be ready, for we “know not the day nor the hour,” and we must learn to read “the signs of the times.” But fretting about the end of the world does little more than distract us from the real work of living well now.

We can take nothing with us, yet…

Gladiator (2000, DreamWorks and Universal Pictures, dir. by Ridley Scott)

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P.D. James (1920-2014)

P.D. James, one of my favorite authors, died Thursday, November 27, 2014, at 94 years of age. The world has truly lost one of the greats—she was a master of the “classical detective story,”[1] an accomplished author of a fine novel of dystopian speculative fiction,[2] and, most recently, a beautifully written light mystery set in the world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,[3] which, coincidentally, I finished reading the day before she died.

I also just finished teaching a class on Popular Fiction (as opposed to the other kind, that is, Literary Fiction). P.D. James was one of the few authors whom we discussed more than once, because of her ability to write in more than one genre.

I highly recommend her books, and when you read the detective novels pay particular attention to how she worked within the stringent confines of the genre. Her creative genius lay in her ability to be innovative and original even when adhering to the formulas and conventions of the classical detective novel.

These formulas and conventions include:

The Hero — the detective — employs reason, logic, and ingenuity to solve the crime. He (or she) works by brain-power alone (unlike his counterpart in the Hard-boiled detective novel, who makes frequent use of brute force). Exceptions exist, of course, but the classical detective typically is neither physically attractive, nor sexually active. He may be weak or even disabled, and is often eccentric, fastidious or in some other way aloof from other people. Many classical detectives work independently of the official authorities of the law, solving cases for their own personal reasons. (examples of “classical” detectives: Sherlock Holmes, Adam Dalgliesh, Miss Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot).
Even though the hero of the story is usually the detective—with whom the reader matches wits!—the story is frequently told from the point-of-view of the detective’s “sidekick,” — a close friend, relative, colleague or acquaintance of the detective. This character is never as smart as the detective. Indeed, his job is to ask the dumb questions and to say things like, “I don’t understand” and “I still don’t understand.” (examples: Dr. John Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s friend and roommate; Captain Arthur Hastings, Hercule Poirot’s colleague who has “a talent for pointing out the obvious;” Detective Inspector Neele, a professional cop who serves as the foil for Miss Jane Marple)
The action of the story takes place on a small stage with distinct edges, such as a charming English village, a large manor house in the country, a remote island resort, a cruise ship, or a transcontinental passenger train. The setting represents a world and a social structure with clear, comprehensible boundaries, into which the murder intrudes like a distasteful aberration.
The story ends with the detective cleverly unmasking the criminal and explaining how he solved the puzzle. Once the distasteful business is concluded, the remaining characters all return to their upper middle-class lives, confident in the knowledge that God is an Englishman and that all is right with the world. To the reader, the book (if well-written) has been a satisfying and diverting intellectual exercise.

Of course, there are more conventions and formula elements, but I’ll save all that for later. For now, I just want to acknowledge the passing of a great craftsman in one of the most entertaining genres of popular fiction:

The Rt. Hon. Phyllis Dorothy, Baroness James of Holland Park (Aug 3 1920—Nov 27 2014). May she rest in peace.

Links:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/27/showbiz/obit-pd-james/index.html

This article touches on several conventions of the classical detective story.

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pdjames/index.html

The official P.D. James website. Contains excerpts and a trailer from Death Comes to Pemberley, a biography of James, a complete list of all her books, and a page of “Mystery Writing Lessons.” (The mystery-writing page contains a link to James’s 2004 essay “Why Detection?”)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/watchinggod/2014/11/an-earnest-appreciation-of-p-d-james/

Includes an interesting quote from James about how crime fiction confirms a certain worldview about the universe. Those of you who took my class may recall that one of the functions of the classical detective story is to confirm this worldview.

Books by P.D. James:

Classical detective mysteries featuring Adam Dalgliesh

Cover Her Face, 1962

A Mind to Murder, 1963

Unnatural Causes, 1967

Shroud for a Nightingale, 1971

The Black Tower, 1975

Death of an Expert Witness, 1977

A Taste for Death, 1986

Devices and Desires, 1989

Original Sin, 1994

A Certain Justice, 1997

Death in Holy Orders, 2001

The Murder Room, 2003

The Lighthouse, 2005

The Private Patient, 2008

Classical detective mysteries featuring Cordelia Gray

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, 1972

The Skull Beneath the Skin, 1982

Standalone novels

Innocent Blood, 1980

Children of Men, 1992

Death Comes to Pemberley, 2011

Non-fiction

The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811, 1971 (true crime, co-authored with T.A. Critchley

Time to Be in Earnest, 2000 (autobiography)

Talking About Detective Fiction, 2009

[1] Highlights of James’s career in this genre include Cover Her Face (1962), Unnatural Causes (1967), An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), A Taste for Death, 1986), Devices and Desires (1989).

[2] Children of Men (1992)

[3] Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)

Children of Bridget Jones

acclaimed mystery writer P.D. James dies