Possession

When I first read it eight years ago, I found it turgid and pretentious. The film was criticised for taking the intellectual weight out of the book; yet released from its superiority and stodge, the story came alive on the screen. (My latest thoughts on the film are on Flickering Myth).

Skimming AS Byatt's other works in the library this week, I once again turned against her. Her writing is as self reverential and self referential as any I can think of. I recall my dislike of her calling herself her by initials, not Antonia; and feeling a greater warmth towards her rival novelist sister, Margaret Drabble.

The only intervening mention of Possession was as I started my PhD. It seems that Byatt writes novels which academics may respectably be seen reading on the train that links to, and does not lessen, their own arcane research. I felt AS Byatt wrote for the scholarly demi monde - no; semi hemi demi monde, for post doctoral literary workers are a tiny proportion of the public. I have always felt that an idea worth sharing can be understood widely and that great texts can be enjoyed on different levels. Perhaps that is why I retain a respect for Jane Eyre and Jane Austen (despite what else I've been thinking and writing this week on Triond) and for the Bible. Byatt's Possession on the other hand seemed to represent the worst kind of snobbery and elitism, and I was glad to have left academia which seems academic in both senses of the word; and I rightly wonder what literary and philosophical departments especially truly contribute to our world. (More on this on my Authorial Pretension essay, also online).

However, I am wondering about whether I have come to the novel too defensive. Perhaps I should lay a few other personal thoughts before the reader. Truly, I too aspire to quality intellectual works and am a writer - and a woman. I enjoy philosophy and theology. I enjoy stories within stories, of how the past and fiction are constructs and how we relate to them. So in some ways, AS Byatt is standing on my tale/tail, having got there before me; she feels like a much lauded rival to inevitably be compared to, and perhaps unfavourably.

I am now reading her presuming that she's laughing at academia, and having done a research degree since my first reading/watching of the story helps me appreciate the wryness of the ridiculous paper titles and musings that academics in those fields have. Perhaps I have constructed a view of AS Byatt through the comments of others, of the reviews on the blurb - I must say I have never seen Cosmo magazine write such an intelligent recommendation! Perhaps I have imagined things about Antonia because she calls herself AS, and inferred things from her photo and the fact studded cold biography in the book. Perhaps I attach to her all I hated about higher degrees and snotty Oxbridge.

In one sense, I do admire her. In my thesis, I was told I must have only one thread, when I wanted to discuss multiple ideas. Byatt has done just that in Possession. Victorian poetry, painting, ideology, geology and theology are all discussed alongside modern ones. We seem to have a problem with multiplicity and complexity, and it strikes me as strange that in our supposedly most challenging sector at the university's highest level, we still cannot. It is why I continually applaud Donnie Darko whose companion book begins with the statement that the film is proudly not about one thing. It was a quote to which I was to open my thesis, but wasn't allowed.

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It is hard to read the Victorian poetry and letters sometimes purely because of tiny type. When I enjoy reading, I read fast, and epic poetry cannot be. I found myself tempted to skip ahead because I did not want to be slowed down and felt that poetry and prose work against each other; one is to be savoured and mulled over, the other like the student in Shadowlands, is where your eye skips onto the next word impatiently to see what will happen next.

Perhaps I wonder if I am meant to be one of Possession's readers. I understand that the philosopher Nietzsche wrote for the elite and my lecturer said he would be annoyed that he is so widely read amongst A level students and above. I sensed the same with Possession; that only those steeped in Victorian scholarship should get this work, rather like I heard regarding the film Shakespeare in Love - that if you weren't laughing or impressed then that is because you are a philistine, ignorant of the Bard.

Whether Dame Byatt intended or is glad for it or not, Possession is a well read novel. Perhaps if one does have a deep understanding and knowledge of a subject, you simply wish to use it in your work; perhaps it is natural for Byatt, who was an academic before becoming a writer. It is like telling a great horserider that they may only canter when they know they and the horse are well capable of galloping; and how constricting that feels. Perhaps Byatt should take encouragement rather than umbrage that her novel is popular, and not just with people of her ilk.

I read AS Byatt's official website, looking for clues as to who she might be. Support of my original theory about her came from its link to last years' Guardian article where she is cited as not suffering fools, calling other women writers work 'me-books' - disparagingly; and mention of 'philistinism' in nation's intellectual lifer as well as 'caustic remarks' about people's writing and looks. There are more cold lists of scholarly and literary achievement, and no feel for her voice or personality. Her piece on Possession sounds like a coloured clue list, and she speaks of circumambulating round British Library!

I do not understand her problem with me novels. She says that writing is not about self expression! - that should be done through practical work. Her Quaker upbringing taught her not to be selfcentred. Says the greatest books look out and put the world together in a different way. Why would you write about your own feelings except that you doubted they were real? Perhaps Possession is not enough of a me book, for despite the alleged passion, the book feels cold and detached, as an exercise, but not heart felt.

I had felt that the film Hollywoodised and pantominised the book, but the panto is all there in Byatt. Fergus and Cropper are villains in the Scooby Doo sense, they do grave rob; and Lord Bailey does get his gun out at intruders, but is wooed by talk of a fortune. Much of the dialogue and letters are kept in the film. And the book ends with the postscript of Ash finding his daughter, taking her hair, and giving her a message to Christabel.

Am I to cry that Ash seemingly never communicated this knowledge of his daughter to his lover? Or that the child did not know the aunt she dislikes was really her mum? My response is as it was to Hardy'sJude: that we have a choice and actually positive is more realistic than negative. The author has chosen that their characters part unhappily; it did not have to be so. Such a writer can keep their miserable idea of realism and not pollute their audience with it.

I understand that there are clues in the poetry - but the mystery didn't seem a complicated enough one to need clues. It's not a convoluted plot like Jonathan Creek. Christabel LaMotte is offered up early as the only really likely recipient of those loveletters; that she and Ash parted and she had a child is not the most unusual plot to work out or guess at. They have the mystery plenary at the end, just like Creek or Scooby - and in the film, Maud wears roll neck jumpers like Thelma. Was Byatt aiming for irony? - for it comes across as simply low brow.

Still, it's a story I lost myself in, even if not with overall satisfaction.