Come Like Shadows

Alms for Oblivion #8

by Simon Raven

Korfu 1970, beim Dreh eines Monumentalfilms über die Irrfahrten des Jules Jacobson, Regisseur der namhaften amerikanischen Firma Clytemnestra Films, sitzt zwischen allen Stühlen. Dem Produzenten schwebt ein spektakulärer Kassenschlager vor, die Geldgeber fordern hingegen künstlerische Treue zum homerischen Original, die Stars liegen ihm mit Sonderwünschen in den Ohren, und ein sexsüchtiges Starlet mischt die sittsame griechische Kleinstadt, in der das Filmteam logiert, gründlich auf. Es reicht nicht, dass ein eilig eingeflogener Historiker aus Cambridge die Auswahl der Drehorte und das Drehbuch einer kritischen Prüfung unterzogen hat — die Verse Homers sträuben sich gegen die Verwendung im Film. Ein versierter Schriftsteller mit einem Faible für Literatur der Antike muss her und verwendbare Filmdialoge schaffen — Fielding Gray, der sich am Ort des Geschehens aber nicht nur in die paradiesisch bezahlte Textarbeit vertieft. Er taucht ein in die Welt selbstsüchtiger Darsteller, millionenschwerer Förderer und listenreicher Filmemacher, bis der Strudel aus Begehrlichkeiten, Intrigen, Ruhmeswillen und Gier auch ihn selbst erfasst. Im achten Band der Romanreihe "Almosen fürs Vergessen" nimmt Simon Raven sich für seine Panoramaschau der gehobenen britischen Nachkriegsgesellschaft wie gewohnt mit Witz und Biss die Kulturindustrie und ihre Protagonisten vor.

Genres: Fiction

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel". E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_R...

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A thousand pounds a week...Are you interested?

"Fielding Gray, battered, one-eyed ex-officer and novelist, is definitely interested - especially since it means fourteen weeks on Corfu with a bunch of fiesty starlets making a film epic of the Odyssey. And even more so when he reckons he can salt off a lot more cash into a Zurich numbered account by a devious and nasty little spot of blackmail...Unfortunately, Foxy Galahead, one of the horniest producers in history of the cinema, takes a dim view of Gray's ungentlemanly tactics, and things get decidedly tricky..." From the back cover of the 1972 Corgi paperback edition of the novel (not the one illustrated on Goodreads).

This is the eighth novel in the Alms for Oblivion series (both as published and in the chronological reworking of series - see my review of 'The Rich Pay Late' the first Alms for Oblivion novel written by Raven) and, with only another two novels to go the Alms for Oblivion series had become not a portrait of Britain's 'Establishment' as it changed to survive post WWII but the picaresque adventures of Captain (retired) Fielding Gray. There is nothing wrong with a multi-volume history of someones life, Victorian novelists like R. S. Surtees and real people like Giacomo Casanova and Siegfried Sassoon had done it very well but, needless to say, Raven is nowhere near them in style of ability. I can't help thinking that Raven had exhausted his imaginative powers, which admittedly were never extensive, and the surest proof is the Come Like the Shadows risible film-making scenario.

The problem with novels about film-making is that it is almost impossible to satirise. The really great novels about film making, like 'Day of the Locusts' by Nathaniel West, are few. The efforts of most novelists, even good ones, to capture the reality of film making are inevitably embarrassing. Who reads 'Prater Violet' by Christopher Isherwood or believes that it should share shelf space with his Berlin stories of 'A Single Man'? If only one work by Isherwood could be saved would anyone save Prater Violet? If only Prater Violet could be saved would anyone bother?

Come like Shadows is a lot more fun than Prater Violet but that is not saying much. Raven knew as much about film-making as he does about Britain's imbroglio in Cyprus (see my review of the Judas Boy) or the with-drawl from India (see my review of Sound the Retreat). The leading lady, Sasha Grimes, may be based, as another reviewer claims, on Vanessa Redgrave but clearly Raven's knowledge of Vanessa Redgrave, or any other actress, was based on less than nodding acquaintance.

There is a great deal about money, and avoiding taxation, in this novel and unless younger readers have a strong grasp of post WWII taxation policy in the UK the importance of this is likely to be unfathomable. What any reader today will find absurd is this final foray of Raven's maniacally evil CIA agent (who has popped up again and again doing the dirty by, for example, causing the happy Cypriot subjects of the the British in Cypress to rebel against their loving masters) who uses various completely non diabolical means to destroy Fielding Gray (I am being very vague because of the sheer stupidity of the means of 'torture' used and I wouldn't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment in encountering in the novel).

This novel is an example of an author who exhausted his subject and is treading water. Raven can write well, and this novel is fun, in the way the James Bond novels are fun, but there are a lot better, and amusing, novels to read.

I have read this novel several times, most recently during COVID lockdown, but I don't know that I would have reread it otherwise.

[Alex Sarll]

In amongst the usual depravity and venality, flashes of the purest poetry I've read from Raven. This instalment, you see, is set around the filming of a new adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, and if there's one thing for which even Raven's cynical avatar Fielding Gray has a certain respect, it's the classics. Raven was himself a prolific screenwriter, and his account of life within the business, of the competing demands commerce, ideology and art place on the adapter, feels convincing in a way the later books in the series haven't always managed. And if you've ever felt that none of the modern English renderings of Homer do him justice, well, so has Raven, and for a time he sets Fielding to sorting that out. Of course, Raven being Raven and Fielding being Fielding, in the second half of the book other concerns intrude ever more forcefully, and lust and power begin to crowd out art. Which is a little disappointing, but does on some level feel depressingly fitted to Raven's firm suspicions of the modern world.

[N N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raven on movie-making. Remarkably prescient about how the insane far left would eventually highjack and pervert all mainstream cultural endeavor. Interesting how the Sasha Grimes character, based on Vanessa Redgrave, is not made into a caricature; instead, her left-wing hang-ups are linked to aberrant sexuality. The gung-ho imperial chauvinism of the finale is deeply heartening.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

After the rather disappointing volumes 6 and 7 in his magnum opus, I was despairing of Raven ever coming back to form, but was rather delighted with this, Raven's foray into the filmmaking biz. Probably no more accurate here than he is in discussing any other of his endeavors, the book is still a lot of fun, even if we had to say goodbye to probably my favorite character, Angela Tuck, who at least is given a demise worthy of her salaciousness.

Our stalwart protagonist, Fielding Gray, is charged with writing the script to a new version of Homer's Odyssey but finds it difficult to satisfy all the various hands working at cross purposes. When he dreams up a scheme to be placed on retainer and his funds sent to a Swiss bank, things get dicey fast, and Gray is only saved at the last moment.

Interestingly, Christopher Nolan has just announced HIS next venture is an epic all-star extravaganza of the same piece of literature -- let's hope his production goes off much smoother than the one detailed here!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've compared these novels to watching a George Melly concert. Quite brilliant at times, witty, acerbic, rude and elegant. A real treat for a while and then a little bit too much, too over privileged, too decadent in a sixties way, eventually rather dreary. The more books Fielding Gray appears in, the more I come to dislike him. Ah well. 8 down, 2 to go! Think I'll have a long rest first.

[Robert Ronsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the eighth in the Alms for Oblivion series which I have described as 'bawdy'. This is by far the bawdiest. The thoroughly reprobate Fielding Gray joins a film unit on the island of Corfu where an American film version of Homer's The Odyssey is being shot. Gray is employed as a screenwriter and loses no time trying to milk the job for all the pleasures and lucre that it can bestow on him. After early successes hubris sets in and we all know what that leads to.
An excerpt quote from a Times critic adorns the front cover of the version I read saying: 'Vigorous, honest ... stunningly accurate.' It is all these things and being set in the 1970s, when a 'starlets' route to stardom depended as much on her skills on the casting couch as much as, if not more than, in front of the camera the accuracy leads to many scenes and much dialogue that make the 21st Century reader cringe. And then we remember Harvey Weinstein and we see what the Times man (it would have been a man) may have been alluding to.
None of this justifies the casual anti-semitism displayed by the characters that wouldn't have survived a modern-day edit. A sensitivity that is presaged by Raven's sideswipe at the creeping left-wing 'wokism' that threatens to disrupt the artistic integrity of the movie.
I probably enjoyed this book much more when I read it 50 years ago.