Neil Gunn's Creation of a 'Meta-Novel' of the Highlands
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DEPARTMENT OF SCOTTISH LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW DOCTORAL THESIS CHRISTOPHER JOHN LAWSON STOKOE Closing the Circle: Neil Gunn's creation of a 'meta-novel' of the Highlands. Date of submission - 6th March 2007 4 C.J. L. Stokoe, March 2007 ý14)_)'e i. )Z '! '_ ý' i/ . f' 2 A riý'l '70 914 CILjc, ý 140 (o %ý ý dJ 4a ou - LýL 4s .r" " rj ý VLS 1rý_ri 2/\g: iii ý Lý ß-42. L.... " zýtj-ýl 3 °- t -. ý"r ýw % "ý1 . s .aý. _ 3 t, ýý t.,40-cjl , -TL ýV4 tA Lr &1 Lit . ~. Or 14 W ý-*ý ýa ý ý,r 44 ýwý 'ý _7M I ý" sjj. Az { º I O Ii -11 .. 14 LL I jJ_t4 r iiu /I' __ c) £L4 r CIA. Leh ý^(v ý- " `. i ýi: º, IL it L,. -a LJ . C)D-C-1 ,..ýý ..ý 4 ABSTRACT Whilst researchinghis bibliography of Neil M Gunn, the writer found photocopies of papers said to have been in Gunn's desk at the time of his death, amongst which were copies of both sides of a handwritten sheet' torn from a loose- leaf notebook. This document, produced in responseto perceived criticism by Eric Linklater, offers a unique insight into Gunn's view of his literary achievement at the end of his novel-writing career. In it Gunn sets out the theoretical concept of all his twenty novels being components of a single, composite, 'Novel of the Highlands', an abstract concept referred to in this thesis as a'meta-novel'. The thesis examines the literary viability of this meta-novel; it follows a tripartite form: chapter one, which records inter alia Highland problems, forming the introduction, chapters two to four inclusive forming the central developmental section before culminating in chapter five, the conclusion. The developmental section offers a critique of the problems outlined in the introduction via a series of 'epicyclic journeys' which approach the problems from the perspectives of childhood, history and culture, each contributing to the achievement of a positive conclusion. By considering the interplay between each chapter heading and the content of the individual novels allocated to it, the implied plot structure of the overall work can be established. Gunn habitually re-used and adapted his material over time. The evolution of this material in the individual novels is discussed. The meta-novel represents another, and final, re-use of material and, through the exercise outlined above, it is hence possible to speculateon which elements of the individual novels Gunn deemed to be important in retrospect, as it is these that develop the meta-novel's plot. Thus, crucially, the examination prompted by the existence of this primary document enables a re-evaluation of Gunn's individual novels, which this thesis also undertakes. Reproduced as a frontispiece to this thesis by kind permission of Dairmid Gunn, the nephew of Neil Gunn and his literary executor. CONTENTS 6 Page FRONTISPIECE 2 ABSTRACT 4 CONTENTS 5 INTRODUCTION 8 Gunn's retrospective vision: a private exercise 9 Gunn's public face 14 Gunn: language and politics 18 Gunn the writer: background, motivation, aims and objectives 22 Gunn's meta-novel: form, structure and argument 28 Aims of the thesis: Part one - structure and argument 34 Part two - contextual framework 36 SECTION ONE: The 'locality' of the Highlands as a state of mind 41 The contributory novels 42 Locating chapter one in spaceand time 45 Themes of chapter one 48 The'Man who Came Back' 57 Relating the themes to the title 61 Re-appraisal 65 SECTION TWO, Part One: The wisdom of boyhood 68 The contributory novels 69 The first epicyclic journey 77 The state of childhood 79 The 'wisdom of boyhood' 86 That which was lost 97 SECTION TWO, Part Two: The Biographical extension 101 The contributorynovels 102 The Biographical extension 106 The religious dimension 111 The urban influence 118 The Man Who Came Back 123 Re-appraisal 139 SECTION THREE: The Highlands as History 141 The contributory novels 142 Views of Highland history 144 Non-narrative history 157 Gunn's historical novels 158 That which was lost 188 Re-appraisal 192 SECTION FOUR: Transition Part One: The Murderousness of the Modern World 195 The title of the chapter as a whole 196 The Murderousness of the Modem World, the contributory novel 198 Identifying the issues 202 7 Page The issuesrevisited in The Green Isle 205 The analytical versus the intuitive mind 213 That which was lost 221 SECTION FOUR: Transition Part Two: Escapism Validated 224 The contributory novels 225 A consideration of escapism 229 The first three novels 232 The last two novels 254 Re-appraisal 269 SECTION FIVE, Conclusion: The Comedy of Transcendence and Light 273 The contributory novels 274 Themes of the concluding chapter 277 The individual novels 279 The comedy of transcendenceand light 303 Re-appraisal 323 CLOSING THE CIRCLE A final overview 325 BIBLIOGRAPHY 336 Primary texts - The published novels of Neil M Gunn 337 Primary texts - Other works by Neil M Gunn 338 Secondary texts 343 INTRODUCTION 9 Gunn's retrospective vision: a private exercise At the end of his writing career (probably in the 1960s) Neil Gunn, irritated by a remark of Eric Linklater's along the lines of 'You can only write one novel of the Highlands! ', was moved to list his published novels in chronological order, adding the comment 'Twenty novels. Now which of them is the only novel Eric Linklater said could be done about the Highlands?'2 Had Gunn only created this list, the document would have been merely a curiosity, an indication of his sensitivity to criticism, implied or actual. Fortunately he took the process a stagefurther and on the reverse side of the list, under the heading'My Chapter Order', he set all twenty novels within a series of esoterically-titled chapters of a unitary and coherent 'Novel of the Highlands', thus creating a single extended work incorporating his entire output of novels. The chapter headings are: 1. The "locality" of the Highlands as a state of mind: [The] Grey Coast, [The] Lost Glen, Second Sight 2. The wisdom of boyhood: Morning Tide, Highland River, Young Art and Old Hector 2a. The Biographical extension: The Serpent, The Drinking Well 3. The Highlands as History: Sun Circle, Butcher's Broom, The Silver Darlings 4. Transition: The Murderousnessof the Modem World: The Green Isle [of the Great Deep] Escapism validated: Wild Geese [Overhead] and The Lost Chart, The Shadow, [The] Key of the Chest, Blood Hunt 5. Conclusion - The Comedy of Transcendenceand Light: The Silver Bough, The Well at the World's End, The Other Landscape 2 Whilst researching for his bibliography of Gunn's works, the present author discovered a photocopy of an unpublished manuscript in Gunn's handwriting. This lists his twenty published novels in order of publication, except that Morning Tide is quoted as 1930rather than 1931. One novel, The Shadow initially (London: Faber 1948). was omitted, and was inserted against the date 1946 - the date of writing - see F. R. Hart, 'Neil Gunn's Drama of the Light, in The History of Scottish literature: Volume 4 Twentieth Century, ed. by Cairns Craig (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987) p. 98. 10 Gunn excludes The Poaching at Grianan, a novel serialized in the Scots Magazine between September 1929 and May 1930, which was published posthumously. This conceptual, composite, work, transcending the individual novels of which it is comprised, will be referred to throughout this thesis as a meta-novel. In this term, the prefix is not used in the senseof 'metafiction' but rather that of Mohan Sawhney'sconcept of a'metamarket', with its implication both of inclusivity and of being greater than the sum of its component parts. Of this Philip Kotler writes: Mohan Sawhney has proposed the concept of a metamarket to describe a cluster of complementary products and services that are closely related in the minds of consumersbut are spreadacross a diverse set of industries. The automobile metamarket consists of automobile manufacturers,new car and used car dealers, financing companies, insurance companies, mechanics, spare parts dealers, service shops, auto magazines,classified auto ads in newspapers, and auto sites on the internet. In planning to buy or buying a car, a buyer will get involved in many parts of this metamarket.3 In the case of the meta-novel, twenty individual and disparate novels are linked not only through common authorship, but also through an intimate inter-relatedness and an overarching,evolving structure. It is possibleto seeand describeboth these aspectscoherently and in so doing to illuminate the individual novels which are parts of this comprehensive vision. Although, ironically, Gunn's retrospective exercise tends to confirm Linklater's assertion, it provides, at the end of his career, a remarkable insight into the coherencehe perceived in his literary achievement. Edwin Muir, when reviewing Gunn's novel The Serpent,4 made comments about Tom Mathieson, the principal Philip Kotler, Marketing Management (Paramus,NJ, USA: Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 9. Neil M. Gunn, The Serpent (London: Faber, 1943). Francis Russell Hart, and J. B. Pick, Neil M. Gunn: A Highland Life (London: John Murray, 1981) p. 129 states: "The two most personal of his novels - the ones he called "my own peculiar ones of which I'd say nowt" - are those in which his secret life is indirectly revealed, The Serpent and The Shadow.' 11 protagonist and narrator, which are just as applicable to Gunn himself and this retrospect. He said: The unity of the story is the unity of one man's experience as seen by himself shortly before his death, when the pattern has already woven itself, and by turning round he can seeit spreadout before him .5 The concept of all the novels forming part of an unified whole has never been advancedseriously by critics, although Alexander Reid did comment: [This] enablesme to demonstrate something about Neil Gunn's achievement which has not, so far as I know, been noticed before be by critics - that though each of his novels can read with pleasure in isolation from the rest, all, without exception, take on a larger significance if they are viewed as contributory volumes to a single work which might awkwardly but fairly accurately be entitled A Scottish Mystic's Searchfor the Conditions of Human Fulfilment.