The Green Child

by Herbert Read

Beautifully written, thefrom her sadistic husband. She leads Olivero to the millstream's source and plunges him into her strange, subterranean world.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, Philosophy

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Sir Herbert Edward Read, (1893 - 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Politically, Read considered himself an anarchist, albeit in the English quietist tradition of Edward Carpenter and William Morris.

Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art & the publisher and editor-in-chief of Jung's collected works in English.

On 11 November 1985, Read was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.

He was the father of the well-known writer Piers Paul Read, the BBC documentary maker John Read, the BBC producer and executive Tom Read, and the art historian Ben Read.

Reviews

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This bizarre novel was broken into three disparate parts, and by 'broken,' I mean ruined. For part one, he might merit 5/5 stars, for part 2, 2/5, and part 3, 4/5. The longest middle section is a droll account of the main character's life story, his toppling of a dictator, conspiring with revolutionaries, his imprisonment, etc. It was written in an historical style, rather than the lyrical splendor of Part 1.

Part 1 and 3 concerns the 'green child.' In the last, short part, we are treated to a reimagining of Plato's cave allegory, and left with some unanswered questions, but it doesn't matter because Read is attempting a unique approach, is investing his narrative with mystery and meaning, and this book employs grand, memorable imagery. It is only a shame the writing falters for about half of the book's length.

A quick read, nonetheless, and one of those books you may never encounter in your natural lifetime but one which must be sought out and captured. It reads like a slightly disturbing dream. If only the author would've written more novels, then we might have been treated to a masterpiece. What we have is about on the level of a novella by Arthur Machen.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter I was so enchanting, so visionary and suffused with natural glory, that I thought this was not just another book I was reading but was rather a sign, a message from unseen powers the meaning of which was left for me to figure out. So I began searching my mind for reasons or events that led to my reading the book at this particular time; after all, it had been sitting on my shelf, unread, for a good fifteen years, so isn’t it natural to wonder why I had picked up such a magical book at this particular moment?

I didn’t get very far in my psychic investigations, however, replacing them rather with internet searches for a talismanic first edition, and soon enough it didn’t matter anyway. Chapters II and III, and their pronounced lack of enchantment (esp. chapter II and its detailing of political processes), took care of that necessity, saving me a few bucks in the process. This is not to say that chapters II and III are not well written – the prose is exquisite throughout – but that chapter I is a charmed natural outpouring of visionary prose, as of a dream transcribed, like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, while II and III are more like conscious products of a mind with an agenda. And very few minds with a socio-political agenda are capable of real magic. Magic, by my definition at least, must be primarily self-less, while agendas are self-centered.

So The Green Child let me down. Or maybe the green child in me is just far more interested in a fertile potential than a narrative that pares that potential down into organized facts. By the end of the book I was actually finding Sir Herbert Read’s intentions fascistic; especially his depictions of what death will bring and of art’s role in society. Death as a crystallization of soul-less corpses merging with mountains? Art as genteel and intentional variations of a natural order? Thoughtful concepts but, no thanks, not for me.

I guess utopian fantasists feel they must explain and define every little component of the perfect society, and so are by definition fascistic. But is that what I expected from an intellectual anarchist such as Read, even if the order he put forth was not imposed from without but arose naturally? Within the boundaries of the book itself it’s not fascistic, but at the level of the literary imagination that conceived it it certainly is. And so toward the end I started sensing how his pre-conceived agenda was informing the book, and I started pulling away from its enchantments.

Though I did love his large pet beetles as companions for solitary sages. As people progress through the stages of his utopian society, the capable ones end up as solitary sages living in the mountains where they pass their timeless days in silent contemplation of their own minds, and during the initial stages of this they are accompanied by one of two animal companions – blind snakes who affectionately curl around one's neck, or large beetles who act like mechanical dogs. The people who don’t reach this stage are put in charge of the crystallizing corpses, which isn’t viewed as an indignity in his perfect society.

I’d love to have a large pet beetle faithful as a dog, but I'm not interested in becoming a crystal.

[Warwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baffling, dreamlike, unsatisfying, crystalline, homely, intriguing and odd, reading The Green Child is a bit like having a long and rather annoying dream, in which nothing much is resolved but many interesting questions are raised in strange and new ways.

The book is split into three distinct sections, each ending in a kind of death; and taken overall the novel represents a statement or exploration of where satisfaction in life is to be found – moving through childhood, early hardship, political and military triumphs, into an altogether stranger and more philosophical realm. Yet the three sections are so distinct as hardly to hang together: the first is a homecoming tale with a fantasy twist, having an English-Gothic fairytale feel. The second, though, is a detailed political parable set in South America which perhaps goes on a bit too long and whose idealised Communistic morals are, I would say, not all that convincing. The final section is set back in fantasy-land, but the mood here is contemplative and philosophical.

There is a feeling of great insight always around the corner; yet the book never quite delivers on its promises. Still, some of the things being tried out here are rich and fascinating (I felt several affinities with Alasdair Gray's Lanark ) and its reader-friendly length makes it well worth trying out – one of the stranger literary products of the time, which Capuchin have done well to keep in print.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Green Child is a peculiar little novel that my Mum found in a second-hand bookshop and lent to me. First published in 1935, it is a narrative in three very distinct parts that seem to be situated in different genres. The book opens with the protagonist Olivero returning to the village where he grew up for the first time in thirty years and encountering the titular Green Child. She is from a fairly obscure folk story, The Green Children of Woolpit that I was already familiar with because it's from Suffolk. However, the original story is set in the 12th century, whereas the green children in Read's novel emerge around 1830. After Olivero learns the Green Child's story from her husband and runs off with her, he tells her the lengthy tale of what he's been doing for the past few decades. This section is set in South America and has shades of both Borges and the French Revolution. By a series of misadventures and coincidences, Olivero becomes a revolutionary and then benign dictator of a small mountainous country named Roncador. After this extended flashback, the Green Child and Olivero travel to the mysterious world she came from. The reader gets to explore the social structures and culture of this world in the manner of Erewhon and similar 18th and 19th century utopian/dystopian literature.

Thus the first section is adventurous and largely conventional, the second (and longest) concerned with politics and economics, and the third mystical and philosophical. What unites them is a distinctively idiosyncratic perspective. Here is an illustrative example of each:

[1]
She looked up without betraying any surprise or emotion. Olivero advanced and took her hand; it was very cold. "Let us go out into the sun," he said. She relaxed in her attitude and prepared to follow him. He did not return through the kitchen, but unbarred the disused front foor, which led directly to the paddock. The sun was not far risen, but shone warmly above the low meadow mists, the grass heavily laden with dew, the delicate gossamer webs in the hedges. They went across the paddock in the direction of the river. The rabbits scampered away before them, and a few old crows rose croaking from their morning meal.
The green girl walked like a fairy. Her feet were bare and wet with dew; she always looked up to the sun.

[2]
The art of government is the art of delegating authority. It is essential that the authority delegated should be held like a ball on an elastic string: it does not matter how large the ball, or how far the string is stretched, provided authority returns to its source at the inflection of a finger. The ideal governor is one who has dispossessed himself of all authority, remaining merely as the mathematical centre in whom a thousand lines converge: the invisible, perhaps only the potential, manipulator of a host of efficient marionettes. In more complex states the system of delegation will be divided and subdivided, but such was the simplicity of the economy of Rocador that I myself was able to control directly every post of administration.

[3]
The highest type of workman, however, was engaged on the polishing of crystals. For this purpose various kinds of rock were used - opal, chalcedony, fluorspar, limonite - but rock crystal was prized most on account of its purity. The science which we call crystallography the study of the forms, properties, and structures of crystals - was the most esteemed of all sciences in this subterrestrial country; indeed, it might be regarded as science itself, for on it were based, not only all notions of the structure of the universe, but equally all notions of beauty, truth, and destiny. These questions occupied the sages on the uppermost ledge, and those who had retired like hermits to their solitary grottoes.

The Green Child left me with the impression that Herbert Read had many interesting ideas and attempted to cram as many of them as possible into a short novel, the only one he wrote. I can't say it all fits together in a seamless and naturalistic manner, but I've never come across a melange quite like this before and enjoyed it. Read writes vividly and enthusiastically about topics from the English countryside to revolutionary conspiracies, from writing a democratic constitution to reconciling oneself to death. This strange little novel covers a lot of ground and is well worth reading.

[Nathan R G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange and beautiful. Two words to quickly yet aptly describe this novel, the only one ever penned by essayist, art-critic, and early anarchist Herbert Read. Somewhere I read that T.S. Elliot was awed by the concision and beauty of the prose. The story is divided into three sections. It should be said that this is not a very long book, but the term novella strikes of absurdity given the depth and skill at work on this text. It is not akin to the frantic densities of Marquezian magic-surrealism - this novel predates such by many years- nor the sweeping assaults of some Joyce work, but rather it is the vivid depictions and clear purpose to a bizarre, fascinating story that forever keeps the visions from this book in my mind. There is certainly imagery at work as Read immediately describes the return trip of the main character (Olivero) to his home village under moonlight, following a stream that he swears is flowing in the opposite direction he recalls as a boy. A very troubling scene then ensues which brings the reader to realize the dreamlike opening to the book (written in the 1930s) is a portent into a most unusual genius.

Just as you become accustomed to the ethereal world, the second part begins. It is a retrospective account by the protagonist, who now speaks in the omniscient first-person voice. The circumstances are entirely different, transpiring in South America. I won't elaborate more on the nature and events in this part, but it is the longest stretch of the novel containing certain meticulous elements of description and is almost wholly separable from the fist and third parts, or so it seems superficially. Read is no doubt intending this device for any number of reasons that are difficult to surmise. At the very least they develop Olivero, who aside from one other character (the ambivalent "Green Child") is the axis of the story. Olivero's transformations personal, political, ontological are allowed to be examined here until again the story shifts back to the original circumstances resuming from part 1. The final act of this literary triptych is the most fantastical, taking Olivero and the reader to a world unrecognizable yet described again in tenebrous, gossamer, and surreal tones that raise literature to a craft where all senses are employed in attempting to discern the quality of experience.

This is a challenging book only in its unconventionality, with a haunting quality present in only the highest arts. I am in wonder of it and hold to the book a fondness I feel for few other things.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

He should have just stopped after the first part

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sir Herbert Read's only novel is a strange, surreal masterpiece of prose - a fascinating blend of fantasies, of the otherworldly, imaginative world and of a political utopian dream and a beautiful, even poignant story of a man's return to the world of his childhood, a girl's return to the world she belonged to and their own return to the inevitable fate of death and permanence. It is vivid, at times haunting, exhilarating, a little daunting and endlessly imaginative. Indeed, a novel that, in all its strangeness, is unlike any other. And a special thanks to Graham Greene for his glowing review of it that first inspired me to discover and read it.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no other British novel I've read quite like this - "Lanark" is similar in its segmented shifts between fantasy and realism, but goes on much longer and ends up confessing to its own artificiality. "The Green Child" ends without explaining the mystery of who its narrator may be, and seems quite sincere in its philosophising. The first section concerns the Victorian wanderer, returning to his childhood village and rediscovering the strange phenomenon of the green-coloured children that appeared from nowhere years earlier. The long middle section fills in details of his adventuring through Spain and South America, compressing a "Nostromo" narrative of idealism and revolution in to 70 pages. Then the closing section takes us to a magical kingdom beneath the Earth. At times this is like a Machen story, at others it comes close to the political surrealism of other 30s writers like Ruthven Todd and Rex Warner, with echoes of David Lindsay's "Voyage To Arcturus".

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

sensible, handsome prose about some spooky shit. the structure is like a little sandwich. but the mustard gets on your hands and you wipe them on your dreams.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny little story that starts out as an boys' adventure type of deal set in South America, then takes a sharp left into a literal fairy tale. The author sinks to the bottom of a river with a fairy woman captured in his hometown as a child, and they begin their lives together in her world.

[Brahm · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Got about 80 pages in and it didn't click at all. Felt a bit guilty as it was a gift (although the gifter did warn me in advance it was not for everyone!). Book-reader mismatch for sure.

Great line from one of the top reviews:

...reading The Green Child is a bit like having a long and rather annoying dream, in which nothing much is resolved but many interesting questions are raised in strange and new ways.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked the general who had a bunch of pet hummingbirds all hanging out in his room

[Norman Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herbert Read was a British poet and anarchist and an influential art critic. In 1953, he was knighted—strange, for an anarchist. He also wrote a strange novel that was published in 1935. The novel is called The Green Child. It’s the only novel Read wrote and is an autobiographical political fantasy. In the novel, the green children are two but one dies; The Green Child is three parts:

The first part begins, “The assassination of President Olivero, which took place in autumn of 1861, was for the world at large one of those innumerable incidents of a violent nature which characterise the politics of the South American continent. For twenty-four hours it loomed large in the headlines of the newspapers; but beyond an intimation, the next day, that General Iturbide had formed a provisional government with the full approval of the military party, the event had no further reverberations in the outer world. President Olivero, who had arranged his own assassination, made his way in a leisurely fashion to Europe. On the way he allowed his beard to grow.”

Olivero was Oliver, who is British. Oliver returns to his childhood home and is nostalgic. He stands on a bridge, watching a stream, which runs in the opposite direction it did when he was a boy and schoolteacher. He follows this mystery to its source.

The Green Child isn’t a popular novel, but the people who’ve read it often say this first part is the best, the most poetic. That’s not true. The first part—in which we learn about the green children who came to the village when Oliver left and the fate of the surviving child, now a green woman married to a stupid husband—is the weakest of the three, but does contain beautifully-written descriptions of delicate translucence. Oliver rescues the green woman.

Part two is the past. Oliver travels Europe, arrives in South America and Olivero inadvertently becomes the hero-liberator of a small country peopled mostly by simple natives. Olivero takes naturally to politics. He stages a coup d’état and becomes the political theorist behind the new government. Read even includes a short constitution that states, “Liberty and equality are guaranteed by justice, which is the principle of government in a society of free men.” Voting rights are interesting: male heads of households and widows may vote; priests may not. Usury is abolished, the government oversees all international trade, the government is three men, elected, and a secretary whom they appoint. When a bandit-type raises problems, Olivero leads a successful expedition against him. Eventually, the Bolivar life becomes boring and Olivero heads to England (to Part I.)

I like this part of the novel because it reminds me of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which was published a few years after. Read’s treatment of the Jesuits is fascinating.

The third part of The Green[e] Child is its most fantastic. Oliver goes with the green woman to her underworld, where life is not a cycle but a progression from the mobile and social to the introspective and hard. The green people are crystal people. They study, create and think about crystals, which are perfect. When a green person dies, his body is taken to a room, where crystal entombs it. The crystallized bodies are stacked and the vast caverns of the underworld will one day be full of them; and the living will have no more place. One reviewer called this a fascist world. I don’t understand Read’s intentions but his world flows counter to fascism, which thrives on and dies without perpetual action and mass movement; the green people strive for impenetrable stillness.

There are also pet beetles and snakes that curl around necks: The Green Child is an imaginative novel. The writing is curt and images striking, yet the amazing feels personal. If you can find The Green Child, you should read it.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The assassination of President Olivero, which took place in the autumn of 1861, was for the world at large one of those innumerable incidents of a violent nature which characterise the politics of the South American continent. For twenty-four hours it loomed large in the headlines of the newspapers, but beyond an insinuation, the next day, that General Iturbide had formed a provisional government with the full approval of the military party, the event had no further reverberations in the outer world. President Olivero, who had arranged his own assassination, made his way in a leisurely fashion to Europe. On the way he allowed his beard to grow.”

I really wasn’t sure after that opening paragraph. Nicely written, but an Englishman rising to power in a South American country, faking his own assassination and returning to England? But I’m afraid I know little about South American politics that I haven’t learned through fiction. Maybe it happened, maybe it could have happened, I really don’t know.

I had two good reasons to continue:

■Graham Green provided a fulsome introduction. Not necessarily a sign that this would be the book for me, but definitely a sign of quality.
■Capuchin Classics, who have a lovely list full of books that I have either loved or aspire too, saw fit to reissue The Green Child earlier this year.

So on I went.

Olivero has escaped to the village in the English countryside where he was born. He wanders happily through places he remembers well, until he sees something very strange:

“The stream as he remembered it – and he could remember the pressure of its current against his bare legs as he waded among its smooth, flat pebbles – ran in the direction of the station from which he had just come. But now, indubitably, it was flowing in the opposite direction, towards the church.”

He follows the stream to a mill, where he finds a pale and fragile woman held captive by a brutish man. Olivero is drawn to the woman, recognising as the subject of many local tales. The Green Child.

Olivero rescues the Green Child from her captor and tells her his story.

And it is here that the story takes a sharp turn – from a lovely fanciful country tale to a gentle political satire.

The young Olivero set out from his home to seek his fortune and, almost passively, travelled along a very strange road from messenger boy to dictator.

Fanciful in a very different way. It was readable, but I read hoping that it wouldn’t be too long before the older Olivero and the Green Child reappeared. And eventually they did.

The Green Child drew Olivero into her own world below the mill-pond.

Both are welcomed into the community, where life is ordered around a progression : from the pleasures of youth, through the pleasure of work , through the pleasure of opinion and argument, to the final pleasure of solitary thought.

And so I found myself in a dystopian tale

Olivero makes his journey towards what he comes to realise he had always been seeking, and eventually to the end of his life, when he is absorbed into the rocks that form the foundation of the world.

A very different kind of strange. And not my kind of strange I’m afraid.

The Green Child is a novel in three very different acts. And for me, although there was some lovely writing and much food for thought, the book didn’t come together as a whole.

Maybe a little more background knowlege would have helped.

I’m still thinking about the book, but it still has me confused.

[D.M. Dutcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird three part fantasy. Olivero, dictator of a small nation in South America, has faked his own assasination. He has come home to his real home, England, and back to the small town of his youth. There, following a stream that has seemed to reverse its course, he finds an elfin Green Child, held captive by a youthful aquaintance. He frees her, and travels with her to her world. Part 2 is how he became dictator, and part three is a description of the subterranean world.

As many people have mentioned, the first part is beautiful. The entire book is well written especially for an Utopian novel. Many of those are more concerned with the philosophy, and age poorly, with dated, musty prose. The Green Child has none of that. From start to finish, it is a delight to read.

The second part is also enjoyable. Before he became Olivero, he was Oliver, a young schoolteacher who left home. The story of his rise to self-assasination is interesting, and a satire of what happens when you have the perfect government.

The third part drags the book down. We are now in the kingdom of the Green Children, and while it may be an anarchist Utopia, it is a dreadfully dull and boring one. It is a lotus-eating land of philosophy, as the Green Children slowly ascend ledges till they "mature" and reach the end of their life. I can see why some would think of this in terms of glory; it's a slow, stately procession through various functions of life till the end, and you become a part of earth that spawned you. But it's a very empty life, with the Green Children almost interchangable, and Sally only distinct because she spent time in the human world. It's an alien idea of society, and it's hard to take. It's still done in lively, beatiful prose, with some nice touches to it. And to it's credit, the Green Children world under the earth is never preachy, or didatic. But the end of the novel is so contrary to any idea of what humans would find as utopia that while it works, it's hard to see why Oliver is so satisfied to be a part of it.

But as I wrote this review, I gave it an extra star. It's a deep, meditative book that makes you think, and one of the most enjoyable Utopian novels I have read so far.

[Gabriela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pocas veces me había sentido tan engañada por el título y portada de un libro. Una pensaría que la historia gira en torno a este personaje, la niña verde, pero tiene tan poca influencia sobre la narrativa y el curso de los acontecimientos que cambiaría el nombre de este libro a Cuerpo y espíritu de Herbert Read.

El libro no me gustó para nada, en el primer capítulo iba todo tan bien y cuando comienzo el segundo se sintió así: ¡¿pero qué acaba de pasar?! ¿Me estás diciendo que esta es la historia de la niña verde y cómo la salvaste, pero de lo que más me vas a hablar es del personaje masculino que necesitó estar en el poder y conocer unas cavernas (por arte de magia) habitadas por seres imposibles y que de la nada, se vuelve un Buda cualquiera? Lo encuentro insólito y creo que el autor fracasó un montón en su intento por representar una filosofía a través de una novela. Mejor hubiera hecho un manual de principios, porque ni siquiera fue capaz de revolver los motivos de la historia con la ideología; vez que empezaba a filosofar, se olvidaba por completo de que existían personajes y un escenario en el que ocurrían los acontecimientos, y a través de los que podía representar su pensamiento. Pero forzó todo, tanto que no le creí la historia y nunca me convenció de que pudiera existir un Olivero, una niña verde, un país y un mundo subterráneo.

[Wreade1872 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine if you were watching a film like 'Lady in the Water' and just as things were getting interestingly weird you find someone's spliced a film about Napolean into it.
Now you may enjoy a Napolean biopic but you're not very likely to want to watch it in these circumstances.
In the end this becomes a lost/alien civilization tale with some interesting philosophical leanings. It should leave you very thoughtful but somewhat unsatisfied due to its odd structure.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixture of science fiction (ch. 1), Candide (ch. 2), and the latter books of Plato's Republic (viz. V, VII, X) (ch.3) -- an interesting book, to be sure, though not quite at the level that the blurbs (T.S. Eliot, Rexroth, etc.) would have me think....

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is strange, and not in a good way, I don’t think. Interesting read, anyway.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I should join the chorus of people here who start their reviews with "What an odd tale!", for certainly it is strange. Part fantasy novel, part political manual, part philosophic screed, this is noted literary critic and pacifist anarchist Herbert Read's only novel. I was drawn to read this by the back cover blurbs by Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. If those two throne and scepter Tories found something great in the prose of a disenchanted socialist, then it ought to be worth checking out, right? Sadly, if I could sum it up, this is a novel where some clearly beautiful prose is occluded by Read's need to go into detail about political processes and philosophy that could charitably be described as “nuanced”, but probably lean more towards “muddled”.

The novel is in three parts. Like most people here, I found the first part to be the best written, as much of the “idea” work is psychoanalytical in nature and thus lends itself to physical description and uninterrupted flow of the narrative. There is indeed something very oneiric to this chapter, which focuses on the return of the former dictator Olivero to his hometown in rural England in the 1860s. There he discovers the fate of the Green Child that mysteriously appeared in the town before he departed. After killing her abusive husband in self-defense, Olivero and the Green Child flee, whence begins the second part. The first part has the best writing in the book. Olivero's walk through the night following the flow of the stream to the mill is one of the most poetically evocative I've read in prose.

The second part of the novel is the longest and involves Olivero recounting how he left the town and through a series of coincidences ended up in the rebellious Latin American province of Roncador. Roncador is something of a thinly veiled fictional analogue of Paraguay, complete with Guarani Indians, isolation and history of fairly benign Jesuit domination. By fiat, Olivero ends up becoming the leader of the country since no one else seems to want to do it. The bulk of the chapter is a long discussion of how he organized the economy, built infrastructure and handled governing the country, which ultimately he finds rather dissatisfying even if he's successful at it. It's rather striking how much Olivero's political ideals reflect those of the first Paraguayan dictator, Jose Francia, down to the enlightenment ideals discarded in the face of political reality. However, despite the fact that the author spent a bit of time in South America, this whole part reads rather unrealistically. Olivero's Roncador is an idyllic paradise compared to Paraguay, or even the more settled and stable areas of the real 19th century Latin America. The lack of endless rebellions and political violence is more unrealistic than the fantasy the follows in the third part, after Olivero fakes his death and flees Roncador.

The third part of the novel just gets worse. Olivero and the Green Child descend into the subterranean world that the child originally came from. While at times, the physical description of the alien world of grottos is rich, there's not really any action nor any characters. It's just a dry recounting of the odd philosophy, worldview and life cycle of the Green people beneath the ground. I suppose if you like unfunny inversions of Platonic thinking and Utopian visions of a world no normal human would find tolerable to visit for more than a week without dying of boredom (literally, the Green People live to shape crystals, play mathematical games of sound and geometry with those crystals and then dispute and contemplate abstract philosophical ideas until the day they die, something they look forward to unironically. Frankly, it sounds horribly dystopian to me, but more importantly to the reader, it's boring as hell and goes nowhere. Never before have an uncanny people in such a vividly strange place been rendered as to make them tedious and (no pun intended) colorless as possible.

This novel is a bit of an artifact of the time, and hasn't aged well at all. Reading it, you get why Read mostly did poetry and criticism. That was his calling and strength. Here in this novel, he intended to do both at the same time as well as create a “modern fantasy” based off a rich folk tale of the Green Children of Woolpit. He succeeds a bit at the first, but doesn't really pull anything else off.
Two out of Five Stars.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An odd but brilliant book. It is clear that a poet wrote it, and fitting that it was the only novel he would write. While I do not necessarily agree with the politics of the author, this in no way diminishes the considerable imagination and intelligence of the author and insights I took from this book. The book is divided into three parts, the central figure of which is a man named Oliver/Olivero. The first section is brief, detailing his discovery and liberation of a green child upon his return to England. The second section takes place before the first and is quite long and mostly concerned with Oliveros coup against a South American dictator and the following foundation of a republic, which eventually becomes a benevolent dictatorship under himself. The third section, which is also quite short, details Olivero’s experience in the strange native land of the green child. While the second section is principally concerned with government and political philosophy, so much so that it almost becomes a textbook (which is really quite strange when compared to the fantastical third section) and attempts to prove the volubility of political institution and the sole amorphousness of all political philosophies save perhaps the essence and success of liberalism , the third section is really the most brilliant in my opinion. To me, it serves to make one point, which is the baselessness of our rational thought. As Olivero proceeds through the bizarre social structure of this new world, he has much time to engage in thought. He quickly discovers an entirely new philosophy, dependent on the context of the world. As the world is entirely underground and technology had never advanced to the level of ours, these people had no means to measure time with. Moreover, since their world was always confined by stone (whereas we could look up to the void which is the sky), they believed in no god other than order, that all things should proceed to the rigidity of stone, such that it was their custom to let all the dead become calcified. There is much more to be said about this world and its implications, but suffice to say Read drives this point home with the final conclusion, which is that the soul is disorder, the driver or all things contrary to Order and nature, and that the material body is the divine aspect so to speak, and that, in total contradiction to our philosophy, the body longs to be freed of the soul. In the context of the narrative and the world, this conclusion comes alarmingly naturally, such that I was left contemplating the arbitrariness and infirmity of our own institutions of thought. What an interesting and curious book which I will not quickly forget. T S Eliot praised it for good reason. To think I stumbled upon this book in the basement of a Masonic temple, having entered on a whim.

[Fergus Nm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Echoing the general sentiment that this is frustratingly uneven, however the last section is quite beautiful and almost makes up for the somewhat tedious middle section.

[Joe Simpkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminded me in tone and style of the novel Flatland, philosophical and expositioney

The concept is very strong though, and I must not let my soul interfere, so that I can contemplate it...

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I found this book while I was living in NYC. Not sure if it was from a box of free stuff in my apartment building lobby or from somewhere else. I think likely from my lobby as I wouldn't have bought this for $1 from the Strand, like I did several other books. Or maybe I did?

The book seemed to mesh disparate themes and locales, but it worked as an exploration of human nature and ideas. When Olivero started to feel stifled by the society he created because there was no conflict, he decided to go back to England to find out what happened to the Green Child. It so happens that the Green Child leads him to the intellectual pursuits that he wanted, though they seemed so different (simpler or less to consider, but still complex?) than what could be possible for other humans and if he had stayed in the human world. Why was this subject explored in this way? Because I guess the author had an idea and wanted to share it. I don't fully agree about how the author portrays the soul--it sounds more like the ego. But maybe back then, it was the way to talk about the human drive to take action because something compelled us to.

“I thought I might become a poet, but my poetry was gloomy and obscure, and nobody would publish it. I felt impotent and defeated, and longed for external circumstances to force action upon me. I struggled feebly with the ignorance and stupidity of your and your companions, but as I had no faith in knowledge, my only desire was to leave you in possession of innocence and happiness.” pg. 30

“Olivero had words like these to describe his world, too many words, words the green Child had never heard and could not understand. But he had to use those words, because words and things grow together in the mind, grow like a skin over the tender images of things until words and things cannot be separated. The words the Green Child did not understand fell like music on her ears, and the music had a meaning for her, so that none of Olivero’s words was altogether lost on the moorland air.” pg. 59

“Actually I had loathed the dingy shop, the smell of cloth, the pervading greasy odor of the district, the dull unimaginative work I was compelled to do, the general poverty of my circumstances. Poverty is degrading for any human being; but for one born with those instincts and senses which cry out for beauty and sensitive pleasures, for music and poetry and romance, it is a slow torture, a torture of the mind rather than of the body, and so all the more acute. There were moments, passing before a bookshop or a theatre, when the gall seemed to rise in floods of bitterness within me. I envied the people who could afford to indulge their senses to satiation—people who could take these things for granted, as part of their routine and heritage, and without the real need that consumed me.” pg. 63

“I was not a pioneer by instinct, but sought rather to dwell in those countries and cities where the longest human experience had left the richest deposit of beauty and wisdom. Greece, Italy, Spain were the scenes of my most frequent fancies, and if my thoughts ranged farther, it was to the remote and mystical East, to India and China.” pg. 64

“I answered blindly, at first with the desire to be complaisant. But I had not taken these three steps before I perceived that I had entered on a strange path, which led I knew not whither. Never had I been more conscious of my destiny, that obscure force which drives us to impersonal action, to the surrender of the self to the event.” pg. 75-76

“I call it an interchange of views, but my part of the conversation was mostly in the form of questions, which General Santos answered without reserve. Actually he was old enough to be my father, but he treated me without the least condescension, attributing to me a political wisdom and wide experience of affairs which I assumed without protest. In dealing with men of action I have always found that in matters which they regard as intellectual they have no perception nor possibility of judgment, and will readily accept the most superficial display of knowledge as a profound mystery beyond their grasp, provided always that the display is made with calmness and confidence.” pg. 89

“The only distinction remaining would arise from the division of labour: one man must govern a farm, as one authority a state; but inasmuch as the capability of men vary, so their functions should vary; yet not their rewards.” pg. 131

“Such being the stability and happiness of our state, it may seem incredible that doubts should have entered my mind. At first the doubts were not formulated as such; I was merely seized by an uncontrollable depression, which I vainly tried to trace to climatic or physical conditions. But it soon became clear to me that the causes were mental, that I was enveloped in a spiritual lassitude for which profounder explanations were necessary. No form of activity, neither my hunting-lodge nor my library, could assuage my restless and dissatisfied mind.
This condition lasted for several years, until finally I could no longer evade the truth. My spiritual complaint was produced by the very stagnation around me which I regarded as the triumph of my policy. In the absence of conflict, of contending interests, of anguish and agitation, I had induced into my environment a moral flacidity, a fatness of living, an ease and a torpor which had now produced in me an inevitable ferment. I knew that such a mental disease had afflicted the monasteries in the Middle Ages, when they attempted to draw away from the world of action and live a life of contemplation. It is true that mine was not a life of contemplation, but it was becoming one of intellectual abstraction. So long as the republic was unformed, I was occupied in practical affairs. My ideas were immediately translated into action. But now no action was called for; my mind felt no resistance in facts, no tension in circumstance.
In my speculations at this time I began to suspect that the Golden Age, of which such strong traditions exist in many parts of the world, may indeed have existed, but that it decayed for the very reasons which were now becoming apparent to me. Without eccentric elements, no progress is possible; not even that simple progress which consists in whipping a spinning top from one place to another.
Try as I would, I could not solve my personal problem in social terms. I might have introduced a system of education, and thus have created a society of intellectual beings. I might in that way have put an end to my boredom, but I should have disrupted the peace of the state by creating a class absorbed in visionary speculations, eager to translate their ideological projects into action. As I watched the Indians peacefully going about their work in the estancias, or the inhabitants of Roncador walking in the gardens, sitting in the shade by the fountains, everywhere mirthful and contented, I dismissed such ideas. Better that I myself should perish than that their serenity should be shattered.” pg. 149-150

“The light, however, was perfectly even, and continued without the variations of terrestrial light: an everlasting light, a summer evening fixed at the moment birds suddenly cease to sing.” pg. 163

“There could be no further hesitation, but Olivero indulged in that intensest pleasure which is ours when we prolong that last instant of indecision, already aware of the joy awaiting us, but anxious to observe it before making it irrevocably ours. For when a pleasure such as this is made habitual, it loses in acuteness what it gains in accumulation and depth.” pg. 188-189

“When Olivero considered all these things, he was led to reflect in this manner: Have I not found a path of action which brings me to the conclusion, that while we are alive, and the body is infected by the soul, our desires are never satisfied? For the soul is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of its lust for power; and is liable also to diseases which overtake us and impede us in the search for true existence: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and of pride; indeed, it often takes away from us the very capacity of action. When it moves us to action, then often as not the action is destructive of the body. Whence come wars and rebellions? Whence but from the spirit and the lusts of the spirit? Wars are occasioned by the love of power and power has to be acquired by force to satisfy the demands of spiritual pride. By reason of all these incitements and disturbances, we have no time in life to give to philosophy. Even if we find a moment’s leisure, and give ourselves to some speculation, the soul is always breaking in upon us, causing turmoil and confusion in our enquiries, and so amazing us that we are prevented from seeing the truth. Experience has proved to me, that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the soul—the body in itself must achieve a state of harmony and perfection. Then we attain the absolute beauty that we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but after death. For then, and not till then, the body will be parted from the soul, and exist in itself alone. In this present life, we make the nearest approach to perfection when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the soul, and are not surfeited with the spiritual nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of the fluctuations of the spirit, we shall be pure and become part of the universal harmony, and know in ourselves the law of the physical universe, which is no other than the law of truth.” pg. 192-193


New vocab:
- Lascars (pg. 68)- A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland or other lands east of the Cape of Good Hope who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the mid-20th century.
- Integument - a tough outer protective layer, especially that of an animal or plant.
- Tree-agaricus - Agaricus is a genus of mushrooms containing both edible and poisonous species, with over 400 members worldwide and possibly again as many disputed or newly-discovered species.

[Jim Nielson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique, and uniquely effed up. A decent trip. But given the premise I was disappointed it wasn’t MORE psychedelic and surreal, really. It's really just two okay vintage niche genre stories - Victorian fantasy and a sort of superhuman white king rules over the indigenous utopia thing - spatchcocked together.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always feel bad for people who negatively review books I really loved, people who profess they "didn't get" the book. I am now in that sorry position - I wanted very badly to like this book, and had been looking forward to reading it since I first heard of it last year on John Cartan's list of Strange and Wonderful books: http://www.cartania.com/strangebooks....

All the blurbs and reviews I've read spoke so highly and mysteriously of it that I was intrigued to see how it would affect me. However, only the first part of the book really spoke to me at all; the middle section is an exceptionally dry account of Olivero's (fictional, of course) curious ascent to the position of president in the Utopian state of Roncador. All the details are given of Olivero's arrangement of affairs in the state (to the extent even that the constitution Olivero writes is printed in full). The third part is a description of another, much more mystical, Utopia, that of the Green People, who live in caves, completely isolated from the world above.

The language was somewhat famously described by T.S. Eliot as the finest example of English prose writing in his century, and all the other reviewers seem find something exceptionally beautiful about it as well. To me, while the prose was excellent, it merely sounded like he was writing in the Victorian style - which I love, but doesn't strike me as exceptional. Then again, I'm probably just a philistine anyway, so don't take my word on that account.

The philosophy in the book, which was clearly meant to be allegorical, was rather weak and well, seemed antiquated. The political philosophy he uses to construct his Utopia is vague and idealistic, like many of the philosophers of the French Revolution era he references, but without most of the really insightful and important things to be taken from them. The last part consisted mostly of philosophy, but somehow to me it stank of Plato's Republic (and not just because it took place in a cave), a style of philosophy that only managed to annoy me.

But again, just because I didn't get the book - and I did try, and very much wanted to enjoy it - doesn't mean it isn't everything everyone says it is. But I still can't rate it above a three, for my own part.

[Thurston Hunger · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the book's construction may seem like a sandwich (the first section disappears not down a rabbit hole but whirlpool of thought only to be resumed in the third section), I do feel it is a progression, and not so natural a progression.

Written in 1935, and fortunately available via Link+ in California at least.... the book's writing stands up well at its advanced staged. Its straightforward but detailed prose, always advancing the plot, almost feels like an action-adventure tale. I supposed it reminded me of Jules Verne (which I recall reading as a teen).

Anyways, the book moves through mystery (the first section tingled my Swamp Thing senses) to a political passage by ship and coup, and finally returns to the source of the mystery, although not so much turning the world upside down but trying crystallize a sense of utopia.

The four stages of a being's life in the third chapter alone are fascinating and worth hanging on if some of the military and governmental orders of chapter two bog one down. The idea of no light/darkness, of a constant temperature, and ultimately a stony sort of nirvana - these aspects of the utopia that Read wrote certainly trigger thoughts that linger. Never mind the importance of music and a sort of "free love" before the parents of hippies were born.

I wish I remember where I was pointed in the direction of this book. Utopia, like heaven for believers, might not be all it is cracked up to be in my estimation, but that certainly is not the thought of the writer. Still he had to invent a world to even have a shot at utopia after taking over his own imaginary country and having to leave it - Roncador....the name probably has significance, but kept cracking me up for some peculiar reason.

I predict a movie about Read himself, interspersed with sections enacting his three phases here, will be made....and I'll be happy to see at least that in existence. Even if the film, like myself and well everything, is imperfect.

Oh one other thing, I just noticed there is a documentary film on Herbert Read at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-EB1... I've not watched it yet, but intend to do so, and others here might be interested.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far as novels go, Herbert Read only wrote this one. Still: he was a decidedly busy man. Taste-maker and critic; actual curator and publisher; ribald anarchist much taken w/ Gandhi's commitment to non-violence; a proponent of nearly every current or up-and-coming avant-garde; a man who was everywhere on the English scene (and often reviled for it) for much of the first half (and change) of the twentieth century. And he was friends w/ pretty much everybody. One of his friends was Carl Jung, a man who claimed to have been deeply affected by THE GREEN CHILD. This stands to reason. The novel is mythopoeic in the extreme and deeply uncanny. It would seem to provide raw content rife w/ analytic potential. Though its strangeness and often surreal inventions in many ways distinguish it, what strikes me above all about THE GREEN CHILD is its formidable intellectual tenacity. A gripping read, it also builds worlds and models self-consistent edifices, whether it be in the realm of imaginary political economies or, indeed, entirely autonomous worlds w/ complex systems of belief and conduct. The book also arrives at a profound and revelatory denouement in which the author straight-up goes to bat for acquiescence to the eternal, complete surrender, and supine acceptance that if not explicitly Buddhist is at the very least an apologia for monastic living. That shit speaks to me. Celebration of the solitary. As such, it ends up being a busy-minded construction terminating in an explicitly spiritual committedness. THE GREEN CHILD is at once a cavalcade of invention, a neat structural trick, a gripping read, a demonstration of brilliance, and a lesson that may well teach you how to better abide. Amazing.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The president of the former Spanish province of Roncador in South American fakes his own assassination and secretly returns to his native England and the village he left 30 years ago.

President Olivera is seeking to "escape from the sense of time, to live in the eternity of what he was accustomed to call 'the divine essence of things' - that was his only desire".

But the first thing he notices on his return is that the stream that connects the old mill he used to live in and the station appears to be flowing in the opposite direction. Then he meets the extraordinary naiad-like Green Child, who had caused a sensation in the village when she appeared just as he had left all those years ago.

Written in the mid-1930's, the only novel by a respected poet and critic, The Green Child is something of an oddity. Split into three parts that barely hold together both in terms of story and tone, the best way I can describe it is to say that it is the kind of utopian fantasy William Morris might have written if he had lived long enough to see WWI and the rise of psychoanalysis, which doesn't help a great deal I know.

The first part is pure fantasy, very alluring too; then the second part is a first person account of his adventures by Olivera, well written but with an arid type of elegance, completely without character; whilst part three is in the subterranean world of the Green Child and her people, who worship Order through nature and welcome death.

Unique and admirable, but strangely underwhelming by the time you've finished.

[Santiago Ferris · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a magical realism - historical fiction - magical realism sandwich. I had some trouble making the historical fiction part, which is the bulk of it, go down, but I still really appreciated it. “Here’s how I would run a country in South America, if you guys would just let me.” The stuff about aesthetics in the underground world was the best part for me: it’s such a concise theory of beauty, so clearly wrong, and yet so perfect. This feeling of a wrong or too limited perfection is maybe Read’s chief concern as a critic and anarchist concerned with seeking perfection and harmony in art and in politics. That’s a feeling he succeeds in conveying about a lot of aspects of utopia, both in the underground world and in Roncador, which is a peaceful, just nation, truly perfect like the crystals underground, but one that nonetheless is “clearly wrong,” suffused with what Olivero calls a “fatness of living,” in other words maybe a utopia that could use a little insecurity about itself, a little yearning, the stuff of inequality, civil strife, injustice, and hatred. Worth mentioning that Roncador means “Snorer” — the type of peace it is experiencing is a slothful slumber. The main reason I’m giving the book three stars as opposed to four is that sometimes the writing in chapter two does drag along, and I don’t like his way of gratuitously overexplicating aspects of both literal and historical scenery, sometimes not in a very clear way. A lot of the location descriptions left me confused and I soon started to stop trying to picture whatever was going on spatially in my head.