Flanagan won the Mann Booker Prize this past year for this novel, which took him 12 years to write. The title is taken from a famous Japanese poem by the poet Basho. Flanagan is from Tasmania, perhaps the first great novelist from there. It's a very difficult novel to describe because it takes on so many shapes, like Proteus. The novel opens with a couple of childhood memories, pre WW II, from the main protagonist Dorrigo Evans. We then jump to one of the many affairs he has had during his long life, and we get some information about his background, and a sense why he's been a life long philanderer, but because of his experiences during WW II and being an eminent surgeon, he's become famous, much admired by his peers. In his own mind, however, he considers himself a fraud, deserving of disdain rather than admiration. And the rest of the novel tries to tell us why he feels this way, why despite the accolades, he seems lost, unhappy, continually searching for some thing he's lost or cannot have.
The novel then surprisingly jumps back to his training to be a surgeon in the Australian army as war has broken out. At this point, he is a typical roustabout, training hard during the day, playing at night and the weekends. It ends when he casually runs into Amy Mulvaney, whom he later discovers is married to his uncle. It does the not matter; they have a passionate affair, the only genuine love of his life but because of the war, they part, wondering if they will ever meet again.
The novel then moves forward and the novel becomes a prisoner of war story. This section reminds me of the the best seller UNBROKEN, which also was set in a Japanese prison camp. In this section, Dorrigo and other prisoners, Australian and Asia, are forced into slave labor, building a railroad through Siam, now Thailand. Dorrigo, because he is an officer, has become the leader of the prisoners, loved and admired, even revered for his willingness to confront the stern Japanese commanders. Life is atrocious, a combination of mud, rain, diseases like malaria and cholera, as well as the violent treatment of the prisoners by the guards. Historians estimate that 100,000 slaves laborers died, building 'The Line.' It's hard to believe anyone could survive a week let alone a couple of years of this life, yet Dorrigo and a few men did.
As the war ends, and we see the aftermath, the prison camps effects not only on Dorrigo and his men, but also, strangely, the Japanese commander of the camps and one of the guards. We see how they cope with being called animals, face war tribunals and hanging, despite the fact that they thought there were doing what was expected of a good soldier--- the will of the Emperor. It's clear that Flanagan wants us to understand how/why the prisoners were so mistreated, that this violence and martial discipline was part of Japanese culture. The Japanese, also, looked down on the prisoners for having been captured rather than dying to avoid dishonor. And we see how complicated the world is, no easy answers, no good or evil, just a world that 'is.' One of the guards, however, does have an epiphany when he understands that all he believed in, all he thought was true, was incorrect or just plain wrong.
And returning home, a wife and a family and career as an imminent surgeon bring Dorrigo no peace as this paragraph shows:
"And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter---professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the color of wallpaper, the size of an office or the matter of a dedicated parking space---was vested with the greatest significance, and everything that did matter---pleasure, joy, friendship, love---was deemed somehow peripheral. It made for dullness mostly and weirdness generally (340 Kindle)."
The novel ends with Dorrigo's attempts to make sense of this world, what it expected of him, how his past, his unfulfilled love for Amy and his war experiences, have made his later life a mockery. He never does find peace in his domestic life, his wife, children or medical career, despite the fact that he's seemingly successful, admired, even famous. All this makes him even more depressed and unhappy with life.
In the end, however, he comes to some kind of an epiphany, yelling out just before he dies in a hospital bed: "Advance forward gentlemen. Charge the windowsill," suggesting that life is to be met head on, regardless of circumstances, like a Don Quixote, charging at wind mills. The ending reminds me of the closing paragraph of my favorite book, ZORBA THE GREEK. Zorba, on his death bed, "brushed us aside, jumped out of bed and went to the window. There he gripped the frame, looked out into the mountains, opened wide his eyes and began to laugh, then to whinny like a horse. It was thus, standing, with his nails dug in the window frame, that death came to Zorba."
One of the centerpieces of the novel, that which acts as Dorrigo's mantra is Tennyson's great poem included below:
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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