A Fairly Honourable Defeat
| File:FairlyHonourableDefeat.jpg First British edition cover | |
| Author | Iris Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | John Sergeant[1] |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 402 pp |
| ISBN | 0701115343 |
| OCLC | 611501179 |
A Fairly Honourable Defeat is a novel by the British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Published in 1970, it was her thirteenth novel.
Plot summary
Characters
- Julius King, academic biochemist
- Rupert Foster, his former colleague, a senior civil servant writing a book on living morally
- Hilda Foster, Rupert's wife
- Simon Foster, Rupert's brother
- Axel Nilsson, Rupert's colleague and Simon's partner
- Morgan Browne, Tallis' wife, Julius's rejected lover and Hilda's sister
- Tallis Browne, Morgan's estranged husband
- Peter Foster, Rupert and Hilda's son
- Leonard Browne, Tallis's father
Major themes
The story hinges on the wager that comes half-way through the book when Julius bets Morgan that he will be able to break up Simon and Axel's relationship. The consequences of the wager recall Shakespearean comedy (particularly Much Ado About Nothing), as well as Mozart's operas and the story of Job.[2]: 207–209 The gap between moral theory and practice is central to the book, and is exemplified by Rupert's inability to withstand temptation, despite having written a book about morality.[2] : 215 Julius is a satanic figure, while Tallis is represented as Christ-like, since he absorbs suffering while Julius sows it.[3] The underlying idea, which Murdoch adopted from Simone Weil, is that evil is propagated in the world by the transmission of suffering from one person to another, and that it can only be stopped by someone's being willing to accept the suffering without passing it on.[4]
Literary significance and reception
A Fairly Honourable Defeat received mixed reviews on its publication in 1970. In The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt praised its ingenious plot and "comic spirit", and called it "the most entertaining Iris Murdoch I've read in years".[5] Another The New York Times review remarked on the improbability of the plot, but considering the book as primarily a novel of ideas, found it "one of the most enjoyable and interesting of Iris Murdoch's recent books".[4] On the other hand, writing in The Times, Nuala O'Faolain objected to an absence of sympathetic characters, while in The Washington Post Joyce Carol Oates found the characters "vacuous".[6][7] | journal = Studies in the Novel| date = 2004}}</ref> In 2010 A Fairly Honourable Defeat was one of the 21 novels on the long list for the Lost Man Booker Prize, but it did not appear on the short list of six from which the winner was chosen.[8] In 2022 British religious scholar Karen Armstrong said she left a book club when its members dismissed the novel as "evil."[9]
References
- ↑ Fletcher, John; Cheryl Browning Bove (1994). Iris Murdoch: a descriptive primary and annotated secondary bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing. p. 33. ISBN 0824089103.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedConradi - ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedDooley - ↑ 4.0 4.1 Rabinovitz, Rubin (8 February 1970). "A Fairly Honourable Defeat". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. p. 261. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
- ↑ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (30 January 1970). "Books of The Times: A Comedy of Eros". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. p. 43.
Her people are mostly funny, and she has folded her pessimism into the best-made plot since the death of well-made plays.
- ↑ O'Faolain, Nuala (31 January 1970). "Sitting ducks in SW10". The Times. London, England. p. IV.
- ↑ Oates, Joyce Carol (1 February 1970). "Diversions of a literary puppet-mistress". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. p. 4.
- ↑ Cohen, Patricia (1 February 2010). "New Man Booker Prize goes back in time". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
- ↑ "The Novel That Made Karen Armstrong Quit Her Reading Group". The New York Times. 8 September 2022. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
Further reading
Pullen, Charles H. (1987). "A Fairly Honourable Defeat". Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series. Salem Press. pp. 483–487.