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The Scapegoat
"Jocelyn Brooke is a great writer. . . . If you care enough for literature, seek out The Scapegoat ."—Elizabeth Bowen
"Brooke marked out his magical, personal kingdom, different from any other writer."—Anthony Powell
"Brooke marked out his magical, personal kingdom, different from any other writer."—Anthony Powell
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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October 2, 2012
Glancing once again at the figure in the corner seat, it seemed to him that the soldier was a living symbol of that new existence, so exciting yet so frightening, towards which, every moment, the train was bringing him closer.
Imagine that back in the days of yester year that there lived a sexually repressed man. His denial extended to his wallet. "No, I couldn't possibly pay the extra pound for this spanking... I mean, leather and bound... I mean.... New volume of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. How about this one in the dusty bargain bins?" He fishes out Jocelyn Brooke's The Scapegoat. The destitute sexually repressed person's The Turn of the Screw. That is, if you go entirely for the theory that it was about sexual hysteria. You've got your so-called accidental murder of the object of desire, a young boy. Check. Young boy getting expelled from boarding school for thievery he refuses to explain? Check. Jealously over young boy's crush on another man? Check. The Scooby-Doo fake out supernatural mystery? Check. And I would've gotten laid if I had been born in another era! The mangy dog would've gotten some too. The Turn of the Screw resonated with me because of the "I wish it had never happened" agony. When Miss holds Miles' broken body in her arms and is helpless to this future.... She'll return to that black hole of what cannot change for the rest of her life. The Scapegoat is too concerned with how inevitable everything was and not for how you gotta live with that shit. What good is believing if you are in the right or not, if you had any other choice, when you cannot breathe for wishing that it had never come to pass? The Scapegoat failed for me utterly when it retreated into some rites of man sexual ritual murder thing. Well, it really failed for me when the characters were not much more than hard-ons.
Brooke's novel has more foreshadowing than an episode of Dawson's Creek. Young and newly full orphan Duncan hears a falling axe in every rustling tree branch. He sees he loves me, he loves me not in every rustle of the sheets in the bed he shares with his uncle Gerald. Duncan was a mama's boy. He wasn't taken under the wing of a man or woman who would bring him up in Duncan's own potential image. Held firmly to her bosom he may as well have been a tea bag. Steeped in her every whim, be it half-souled spiritualism or bad dramas. Every man or boy who comes into contact with him will star in the secret world in his mind. It's a revolving wishful thinking bedroom door. Not a very good drama, though. It would have been interesting if he was around to read The Lord of the Flies. It's what I imagine whenever poetry is described to the stuff a twelve year old girl would write in her wall papered bedroom. I never wrote poetry as a little girl. When people say that someone throws like a girl, or runs like a girl, they would mean the quivering Duncan. He's a stand-in. His prescence holds the symbolism of a girl, like a younger boy as a substitute in a sea of prison sharks. Gerald mentions more than once that he wishes there were young girls about. He says it wistfully, underneath the mistletoe. For you, my boy. I doubt that the soldier he meets on the way to Duncan's had thought about their uses before this sacrificial lamb bleeted as his feet. Gerald is every "Leave me alone! I'm a bachelor!" (you know, like that '80s classic from Hall & Oates). He doesn't need this brat on his toes. Let's make a man of him! That's why they bathe together, why they do nudie exercises together, sleep in the same bed... I'm doing what is right for the family I never needed... I'm not lonely...
I know that almost no one has even read this book but I have to ask:
Why all the mentions of Gerald's enormous thighs? The soldier is also described as quite large. They were supposed to be hot, no? This book is known as erotic in the circles that knew about it... Okay, I'm going by the author quotes on the back of the book (Antonia White, Anthony Powell and Peter Cameron). Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that it wasn't hot. But Duncan pays the soldier to have sex with him. I couldn't get it out of my head what would happen to him if he were caught between those thighs. The desire was what burned him to walk about as if he were in some dream he never wanted to wake up from. What did he see in them other than overwhelming... Well, they weren't his mother.
There was potential with the lonely Gerald barely surviving on his farm. He has no one to share his anything with. Here arrives on his doorstep the most impressionable of listeners, someone who essentially views him as a hero. If he flinches from his changeable moods so much the better. He gets to keep up the illusion that he's "alone". Duncan has the mystery of this built-in landscape for a boy who probably read way too many gothic mysteries. He has already been to an all-boys school and I know what goes on in those from Robert Graves' memoir "Good-bye to All of That" (it's buggery, man). The lead actors and their parts in his stories change with his affections and affectations. Gerald feels the pain like a wal-nut cracked between his enormous thighs when his nephew starts to spend more time away from home. He gets kicked out of school. "I don't know" is his answer to everything. It is a shame that Brooke read The Turn of the Screw. It's a shame that Duncan read too many shitty stories. Some blood on a razor. An omnious look crosses Gerald's face. His thighs squeeze too hard. If he had died, you know, some other way maybe connected to those thighs I could have believed that nothing else could have happened. Maybe I'm being unfair and this was all some sort of message about sexual repression in the days of yore. It would mean more if Gerald had lost something other than the undivided attention of the pale red headed boy he never really knew. It's all a bunch of fantasy. From Duncan playing thug with Jim the soldier, his inner play time and pretending to be asleep in bed. It was all biding time before figuring out why no one liked Gerald anyway. The death is playing. It's ritualistic without enough pattern to beat them. It's a "There was no one else around" desire. What the fuck, Jocelyn Brooke? Now he'll tell me about praying mantis that bite the heads off their mates after they've done the nasty. The beginning? Repression. The middle? Repression. The ending? Repression. Freud would probably say that the fat thighs represent someone read The Turn of the Screw and it was all about sexual hysteria. Screw that. Everything doesn't mean sex. What about the rest of it? He could have found a different school, met a nice young man who loved him. Maybe write some bad poetry if he never finds love. Hey, why not? Would it be sad that he didn't get that chance? I have the feeling he would have moved from fantasy to fantasy. How did it feel when there's no heartbeat under Gerald's palm? It's a "It may as well have never happened" book instead of a "I wish I believed in a God to pray to to make this have never happened. Please, please, please..." Isn't the meaning of repression that you wish what you never allowed had come to be? If he had run forever into the cold chambers of his heart ("I knew some shit like this would happen!")... If the foreshadowing (at one point Duncan even "hysterically" declares that he thought his uncle was going to kill him) had felt like the reason for the repression instead of playing a part... I feel like he fucked up big time with that ending.
From far away, at the barracks over towards Glamber, came the faint nostalgic note of a bugle, sounding reveillé. Gerard turned away, seeing everything clearly at last: knowing that the long initiation was over; the rites observed, the cycle completed.
Imagine that back in the days of yester year that there lived a sexually repressed man. His denial extended to his wallet. "No, I couldn't possibly pay the extra pound for this spanking... I mean, leather and bound... I mean.... New volume of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. How about this one in the dusty bargain bins?" He fishes out Jocelyn Brooke's The Scapegoat. The destitute sexually repressed person's The Turn of the Screw. That is, if you go entirely for the theory that it was about sexual hysteria. You've got your so-called accidental murder of the object of desire, a young boy. Check. Young boy getting expelled from boarding school for thievery he refuses to explain? Check. Jealously over young boy's crush on another man? Check. The Scooby-Doo fake out supernatural mystery? Check. And I would've gotten laid if I had been born in another era! The mangy dog would've gotten some too. The Turn of the Screw resonated with me because of the "I wish it had never happened" agony. When Miss holds Miles' broken body in her arms and is helpless to this future.... She'll return to that black hole of what cannot change for the rest of her life. The Scapegoat is too concerned with how inevitable everything was and not for how you gotta live with that shit. What good is believing if you are in the right or not, if you had any other choice, when you cannot breathe for wishing that it had never come to pass? The Scapegoat failed for me utterly when it retreated into some rites of man sexual ritual murder thing. Well, it really failed for me when the characters were not much more than hard-ons.
Brooke's novel has more foreshadowing than an episode of Dawson's Creek. Young and newly full orphan Duncan hears a falling axe in every rustling tree branch. He sees he loves me, he loves me not in every rustle of the sheets in the bed he shares with his uncle Gerald. Duncan was a mama's boy. He wasn't taken under the wing of a man or woman who would bring him up in Duncan's own potential image. Held firmly to her bosom he may as well have been a tea bag. Steeped in her every whim, be it half-souled spiritualism or bad dramas. Every man or boy who comes into contact with him will star in the secret world in his mind. It's a revolving wishful thinking bedroom door. Not a very good drama, though. It would have been interesting if he was around to read The Lord of the Flies. It's what I imagine whenever poetry is described to the stuff a twelve year old girl would write in her wall papered bedroom. I never wrote poetry as a little girl. When people say that someone throws like a girl, or runs like a girl, they would mean the quivering Duncan. He's a stand-in. His prescence holds the symbolism of a girl, like a younger boy as a substitute in a sea of prison sharks. Gerald mentions more than once that he wishes there were young girls about. He says it wistfully, underneath the mistletoe. For you, my boy. I doubt that the soldier he meets on the way to Duncan's had thought about their uses before this sacrificial lamb bleeted as his feet. Gerald is every "Leave me alone! I'm a bachelor!" (you know, like that '80s classic from Hall & Oates). He doesn't need this brat on his toes. Let's make a man of him! That's why they bathe together, why they do nudie exercises together, sleep in the same bed... I'm doing what is right for the family I never needed... I'm not lonely...
I know that almost no one has even read this book but I have to ask:
Why all the mentions of Gerald's enormous thighs? The soldier is also described as quite large. They were supposed to be hot, no? This book is known as erotic in the circles that knew about it... Okay, I'm going by the author quotes on the back of the book (Antonia White, Anthony Powell and Peter Cameron). Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that it wasn't hot. But Duncan pays the soldier to have sex with him. I couldn't get it out of my head what would happen to him if he were caught between those thighs. The desire was what burned him to walk about as if he were in some dream he never wanted to wake up from. What did he see in them other than overwhelming... Well, they weren't his mother.
There was potential with the lonely Gerald barely surviving on his farm. He has no one to share his anything with. Here arrives on his doorstep the most impressionable of listeners, someone who essentially views him as a hero. If he flinches from his changeable moods so much the better. He gets to keep up the illusion that he's "alone". Duncan has the mystery of this built-in landscape for a boy who probably read way too many gothic mysteries. He has already been to an all-boys school and I know what goes on in those from Robert Graves' memoir "Good-bye to All of That" (it's buggery, man). The lead actors and their parts in his stories change with his affections and affectations. Gerald feels the pain like a wal-nut cracked between his enormous thighs when his nephew starts to spend more time away from home. He gets kicked out of school. "I don't know" is his answer to everything. It is a shame that Brooke read The Turn of the Screw. It's a shame that Duncan read too many shitty stories. Some blood on a razor. An omnious look crosses Gerald's face. His thighs squeeze too hard. If he had died, you know, some other way maybe connected to those thighs I could have believed that nothing else could have happened. Maybe I'm being unfair and this was all some sort of message about sexual repression in the days of yore. It would mean more if Gerald had lost something other than the undivided attention of the pale red headed boy he never really knew. It's all a bunch of fantasy. From Duncan playing thug with Jim the soldier, his inner play time and pretending to be asleep in bed. It was all biding time before figuring out why no one liked Gerald anyway. The death is playing. It's ritualistic without enough pattern to beat them. It's a "There was no one else around" desire. What the fuck, Jocelyn Brooke? Now he'll tell me about praying mantis that bite the heads off their mates after they've done the nasty. The beginning? Repression. The middle? Repression. The ending? Repression. Freud would probably say that the fat thighs represent someone read The Turn of the Screw and it was all about sexual hysteria. Screw that. Everything doesn't mean sex. What about the rest of it? He could have found a different school, met a nice young man who loved him. Maybe write some bad poetry if he never finds love. Hey, why not? Would it be sad that he didn't get that chance? I have the feeling he would have moved from fantasy to fantasy. How did it feel when there's no heartbeat under Gerald's palm? It's a "It may as well have never happened" book instead of a "I wish I believed in a God to pray to to make this have never happened. Please, please, please..." Isn't the meaning of repression that you wish what you never allowed had come to be? If he had run forever into the cold chambers of his heart ("I knew some shit like this would happen!")... If the foreshadowing (at one point Duncan even "hysterically" declares that he thought his uncle was going to kill him) had felt like the reason for the repression instead of playing a part... I feel like he fucked up big time with that ending.
From far away, at the barracks over towards Glamber, came the faint nostalgic note of a bugle, sounding reveillé. Gerard turned away, seeing everything clearly at last: knowing that the long initiation was over; the rites observed, the cycle completed.
April 9, 2013
This is very much a story of two lost persons, a boy and a man. We meet parent less young Duncan Cameron on a train heading toward his Uncle Gerald's farm called "Priorsholt". It soon becomes apparent that Gerald March is just as isolated as his nephew and as such has some interest in having a companion in spite of his reluctance and disinterest in taking on the responsibilities that he inherited with his Sister's estate.
Having just lost his mother, Duncan feels both excitement and fear as the narrative begins. He encounters a young soldier on the train whose presence tends to reinforce these feelings as Duncan meditates on his new life. "Glancing once again at the figure in the corner seat, it seemed to him that the soldier was a living symbol of that new existence, so exciting yet so frightening, towards which, every moment, the train was bringing him closer." (pp 7-8)
The actions of both Duncan and his Uncle raise more questions as the narrative evolves and the suspense slowly builds to a tragic denouement. Certainly both Uncle and nephew are sublimating emotions that they would prefer not to face openly much less share with each other. Duncan, as an adolescent on the cusp of manhood, is understandably confused about the changes he is feeling; changes that are both magnified by his seeming innocence and compounded by the strangeness of his new home. His uncle Gerald has practiced the sublimation of his feelings for the better part of a lifetime with the result that his actions take on a more sinister edge. Adding to the suspense is the return of the soldier, who he had met on the train, into Duncan's life in the second part of the novel.The effect of the actions and internal feelings of Duncan and his Uncle heightens the interest of the reader making this fascinating story a thoughtful and enjoyable read. Jocelyn Brooke, in this his first novel originally published in 1948, successfully creates a psychological suspense story.
Having just lost his mother, Duncan feels both excitement and fear as the narrative begins. He encounters a young soldier on the train whose presence tends to reinforce these feelings as Duncan meditates on his new life. "Glancing once again at the figure in the corner seat, it seemed to him that the soldier was a living symbol of that new existence, so exciting yet so frightening, towards which, every moment, the train was bringing him closer." (pp 7-8)
The actions of both Duncan and his Uncle raise more questions as the narrative evolves and the suspense slowly builds to a tragic denouement. Certainly both Uncle and nephew are sublimating emotions that they would prefer not to face openly much less share with each other. Duncan, as an adolescent on the cusp of manhood, is understandably confused about the changes he is feeling; changes that are both magnified by his seeming innocence and compounded by the strangeness of his new home. His uncle Gerald has practiced the sublimation of his feelings for the better part of a lifetime with the result that his actions take on a more sinister edge. Adding to the suspense is the return of the soldier, who he had met on the train, into Duncan's life in the second part of the novel.The effect of the actions and internal feelings of Duncan and his Uncle heightens the interest of the reader making this fascinating story a thoughtful and enjoyable read. Jocelyn Brooke, in this his first novel originally published in 1948, successfully creates a psychological suspense story.
November 5, 2020
Addictively morbid -- a sort of British response to Other Voices, Other Rooms. Also sharing some of the gothicism and homoeroticism of Forrest Reid's books.
Intelligent afterword by Peter Cameron, who puts same-sex desire right at the centre of his interpretation, saying much of what I would like to say about the book (only, better than I might have).
Intelligent afterword by Peter Cameron, who puts same-sex desire right at the centre of his interpretation, saying much of what I would like to say about the book (only, better than I might have).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews