I have just finished re-reading Lawrence Durrell’s Monsieur – my first reading of the book being many years ago, not that long after finishing The Alexandria Quartet. I remember being spellbound by the latter, though I worry now that memory may only be a byproduct of a certain fondness for the rosy literary hue…
This time in Monsieur I was particularly struck by the man’s massive vocabulary and considerable intellect; to combat the former, the novel probably requires to be read with a dictionary handy. Very handy. Something, I confess, I am not minded to do. At times Durrell’s language therefore makes the book really difficult to read with whole paragraphs washing over you like a lukewarm bath. No doubt the writing is clever, but is that sufficient? And without doubt, people really don’t speak in the way in which Durrell often has them speak.
Consequently I was left wrestling with my memory as much as the book, concluding that in the intervening years I have – in some way or another – ‘moved on’. And I also found myself wondering about ‘cleverness’ against some of those other nebulous attributes we label to writers, and trying – inconclusively – to decide which of them I would ascribe to Durrell…
I was intending to read the other four novel in the quintet of which Monsieur is the first – but now I’m not so sure…
Ian Gouge - Writer 