Robert Nye (and Thomas Berger, for Company)

Falstaff, by Robert Nye.

I read this in the college library, being rather drawn in by both Shakespeare and biographies of imaginary people and ‘historical’ novels. I read it, and was amused by its Rabelaisian, Thomas Urquhart-like prose style (unrecognized as such by me at the time) and its reconstruction of an age. Falstaff has always been one of those figures that fascinate me, from seeing him on beer signs as a child up to studying Shakespeare in college to watching Orson Welles’s portrayal on film. He is ambiguous, sensible, cowardly, outrageous, humane but all-too-human, a celebrator of gusto who sighs and rebels against the dying of the light, a braggart and a mocking mirror held up to pretentious ideals. In this story the dying Falstaff has holed himself up in his ‘castle’ for a hundred days, determined to tell his story as taken down by several secretaries, including his stepson Scroop, who is determined to ‘unwrite’ the elderly knight by putting down what he thinks he knows to be the provable facts instead of Falstaff’s boasting tales. Somewhere between them the truth lies, but even when the fat knight finally dies the spirit of what the man truly was remains hauntingly evasive and somehow tauntingly immortal, bidding the puzzled Scrope (and the reader) “Remember me.” I remember I was so naively impressed when I finished reading it that I wrote “What is Truth?” in fancy letters on the inside cover of the library copy. This Half-Price Books copy’s jacket is in pretty poor shape, but I can’t repair it or quite do without it just yet.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fictional Biography. Novel. Hardback.

Faust, by Robert Nye.

Falstaff, Merlin, and Faust make up a kind of trilogy in Nye’s work. “ “Hey, Faust". . . . So begins Nye's slangy, shaggy, pseudo-Rabelaisian reworking of the Faust legend-but the demythifying raunchiness that worked fairly well for Falstaff (1976) and Merlin (1979) mostly falls flat in this macabre, pornographic description of Faust's last 40 days (before the Devil comes to claim his soul). . . as told by ""Kit"" Wagner, Faust's servant/son/executioner. Forget the noble archetype: Nye's Faust is an unwashed 1540 stumblebum with a permanent boil on his nose and an intermittent yen for sodomitical rape; he's a seedy has-been trying to renew his 24-year contract with the Devil by murdering Pope Paul III (with a poisoned communion wafer). And, when not figuring out how to put off the hellfire, Faust and Kit are hanging around the castle with kinky women, indulging in an irritatingly anachronistic stream of hip talk (""We had this long hassle about Predestination""), or copulating with a necromantic harem-""a row of amazing young chicks"" who are mysteriously swept away, one after another, by the infernal powers. There are also sophomoric puns, irrelevant bits of stray erudition, jokes about Luther and Calvin, and a guest appearance by the Virgin Mary. There's no doubt that Nye is, on his own terms, a skillful writer, and he is always interested in more than mere scatalogical horseplay. But this time his tireless jazziness becomes tiresome, he degrades the tragic vision of the Faust originals without putting anything in their place, and-like a gifted raconteur telling a long, tasteless joke-he starts on a false note and stays there throughout.” – Kirkus Review. And that, amazingly, sums my experience up to a tee. I ordered this book years later when it became clear I wasn’t going to find it anywhere else, and it didn’t quite live up to my admittedly high hopes raised by his other books. Maybe I just missed the right time to read it.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Novel. Fantasy. Hardback.

Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works, by Robert Nye.

“In a memoir written seven years following her famed husband's death, Anne Hathaway recalls her life with William Shakespeare, especially a remarkable week spent in London, in April 1594, in his lodgings over a fishmonger's shop.” – Amazon.  Almost a prequel or short trial run before his more monumental “The Late Mr. Shakespeare”, it’s a look at Anne Hathaway and at her enigmatic role in the life of the playwright, their disparate ages, their long separations, and the perplexing ‘second-best bed’ left to her in his will. It particularly considers what marriage to a none-too-faithful artist can entail, especially if complicated both by social convention and actual love. I can’t say I’m loving the cover of this Penguin edition of a graffitied Shakespeare with make-up and gold squiggles for hair; it gives an entirely wrong impression.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Novel. Historical/Biographical. Softcover.

The Late Mr. Shakespeare, by Robert Nye.

“From the pen of the writer whom Peter Ackroyd called "one of our best living novelists" comes a work that is rich, strange, and wonderful. Welcomed in Shakespeare’s own land as the most original, exciting, and provocative novel about the playwright since Anthony Burgess’s classic Nothing Like the Sun, Robert Nye’s The Late Mr. Shakespeare is a literary event. Our guide to the life of the Bard is an actor by the name of Robert Reynolds, known also as Pickleherring, who asserts that, as a boy, he was not only an original member of Shakespeare’s acting troupe, but also played the greatest female roles, from Cleopatra through Portia. In an attic above a brothel in restoration England—a half century after Shakespeare had departed the stage—Pickleherring, now an ancient man, sits down to write the full story of his former friend, mentor, and master. Ancient he may be, but fond, faithful Pickleherring has forgotten not one jot, and using sources both firsthand and far-fetched, he means to set the record straight. Gentle readers will learn much that will open their eyes. One by one, chapter by chapter, Pickleherring teases out all the theories that have been embroidered around Shakespeare over the centuries: Did he really write his own plays? Who was the Dark Lady of the sonnets? Did Shakespeare die a Catholic? What did he do during his so-called lost years before he went to London to write plays? What were the last words Shakespeare uttered on his deathbed? Was Shakespeare ever in love? Pickleherring turns speculation and fact into stories, each bringing us inexorably closer to Shakespeare the man—complex, contradictory, breathing, vibrant. Robert Nye has given us an outrageously bawdy, language-loving, and edifying romp through the life and times of the greatest writer who ever lived. The Late Mr. Shakespeare proves how alive he was.” – Amazon. Ending with the Great Fire that immolates Pickleherring, his manuscript, and his memory-boxes, it is a fitting final work and farewell novel from Nye.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novel. Historical/Biographical. Hardback.

Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel, by Thomas Berger.

Berger, who was probably most famous for his book “Little Big Man” (which got made into the Dustin Hoffman movie) was one of the few authors I’ve actually seen in the flesh when he came to talk at SWTSU. I recall him as a dumpy little grinning man with a bald head and circles around his eyes, rather like Uncle Fester. I had already read “Arthur Rex” in the college library and knew what a great book it was but couldn’t think of anything to ask him about it, so never made any sort of personal contact. “The author emphasizes the glory and idealism of Arthur's court at Camelot, but the ultimate futility of any attempt to ignore human nature and sinfulness. The book is written in an archaic style appropriate to the subject, but with a witty and engaging tone. It is essentially respectful of the Arthurian tales while putting a more modern, even somewhat rueful imprint on them. For instance, the wizard Merlin makes occasional anachronistic references to such things as aircraft, viruses and nuclear power, but always couched in period-appropriate terms. Berger gives considerable attention to the adulterous relationships between Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, and Tristan and Isolde, and even offers a somewhat sympathetic portrait of the villainous Mordred. The Lady of the Lake is a prominent character.” – Wikipedia. A meditation on the nature of heroes and legends, it ends with the great line: "King Arthur, who was never historical, but everything he did was true". I used to have a paperback before I found this copy. The cover is by Jean-Leon Huens.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novel. Legend. Hardback.