Thursday, February 26, 2015

A Masterful Synthesis

The impression many readers have of Walter Scott is that he is a dull writer; and it's true that his prose seems at first unapproachable for those used to twentieth and post-twentieth-century fiction. That is why I would recommend Old Mortality as an introduction to any reader unfamiliar with his work. It is a flat-out barn burning adventure story, really thrilling to read, and as is much of Scott's work also a vivid window into history - the history in this case fascinating for both its foreignness from our times (far greater than one might suppose reading a book about such a relatively recent era in Scotland), and also for its stark, even frightening, similarity to our times.

It is set in the late seventeenth-century, in a nation still in the throes of a decaying feudal system, beset by religious warfare and corresponding conflict between the impulses of modernity and reaction; and this feeling of both closeness and contrast to modern times holds one of the book's fascinations.

The setting is of course also memorable, and finely drawn. What better scene could there be than this brooding landscape of castles and mists - rugged coastlines and crags - carved everywhere by ever-flowing water? Something about that land seems to endow all human action with an epic grandeur, and the undoubtedly epic action of the book is enhanced by that backdrop and finally by another of Scott's great strengths - the brilliance of his characters. Every character in this novel rings true to life, but particularly the mad, indomitable, religious-zealot at the center of the action. He is a man one cannot like (or at least I cannot) but whom I found fascinating and came to have a grudging admiration for, if only in the manner one admires a sheer force of nature!

And finally, Scott had a mastery of the structural architecture of the novel. This intense, complexly interwoven story of a love torn apart by differing visions of life is rendered seamlessly and with vividly clarity, so that in the end one feels they have not only read a ripping adventure story, but also seen a brilliant picture of a very remote world, vivid enough to afford a new perspective on the meaning of our current age.

Brent Hightower
Copyright 2015 Brent Hightower
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