Naomi Alderman and 'The Power' of Unfussy Prose

I've said it before, but I'm starting to think the time has come to shut up about it.  'I don't like George Orwell's prose'.  Sure, 1984 is an amazing book - to call it merely a novel seems to do a disservice to its unparalleled reach and its impact upon almost everything that followed - but I've always felt that a book that left such a mark on global consciousness might have had ... well, a bit more razzle-dazzle.  I've heard others complain, in particular the excellent poet and critic Craig Raine: "Orwell isn't a great prose writer, except in Animal Farm ... Orwell's prose is effectively journalism, not more than that."  There's the key barb: 'journalism'.  It conveys a message, simply, and doesn't have time for ornament or panache or daring.  Circumstance and fact are all that's required.  That direct and unsettling opening sentence aside - "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - 1984 contains, to my mind, no other memorably elegant sentences.  But when the whole is arguably more memorable than any other book in the 20th Century, why should it?  As an aside, I am more than conscious that this casually disregards a host of Orwell's wonderful neologisms: Newspeak, Big Brother, etc.

"Who controls the past controls the future ..."

What got me thinking, and then undoubtedly reconsidering, was Naomi Alderman's latest book The Power.  Like 1984, the prose in The Power is matter of fact - or as I might have described it before re-evaluating, flat, perfunctory and somewhat lifeless.  No matter, like 1984, The Power is disturbing and incredibly provocative.  The premise to the book is simple.  Through their ability to apply devastating electrical shocks to men, the tables have been turned and women are now the stronger sex.  What unfolds is shocking - literally and metaphorically - and over the course of a decade women gain the upper hand. 

"Why did they do it?" "Because they could!"

Prescriptive reading - that ubiquitous adjective 'Orwellian' winks and tells me 'I told you' - tends to be frowned upon.  But maybe certain books should be prescribed, and this one certainly.  As a liberal man I've often found myself paying a kind of nodding lip-service to physical power dynamics between men and women, but have never taken the time to really exercise my imagination and find empathy.  This book forced me to do just that.  Therefore, I suggest it should be required reading for all males.  It steals upon you, unsettling at first, and then hammering itself home through countless abusive and devastating physical atrocities, so much so that eventually just the threat of violence can make men cower in fear. 

   The boy on the floor whispers, 'Please.' Like they do.

   Jocelyn pushes Dakota out of the way and leans down and gives him a jolt in his head. Just to teach him what he's got coming if he messes with them.

   She's emotional, though. Her trainer's told her to watch out for that. There are surges going through her body. Hormones and electrolytes mess with everything.

   She can feel as it leaves her body that it's too much.  She tries to hold it back, but it's too late. His scalp crisps under her hand.

   He screams.

   Inside his skull, liquid is cooking. Delicate parts are fusing and congealing. The lines of power are scarring him, faster than thought.

   She can’t hold it back. It's not a good way to go. She didn't mean to do it.

   There’s a smell of burned hair and flesh.

   Tegan says, 'Fuck.'

Of course, isolating just such a passage does not come close to doing justice to the whole. Whilst it is certainly disturbing, it is the novel's slow, accumulated build, the gradual change in gender dynamics, that are the key to its power.  Along with passages like the following:

   The Minister for Justice turns the page.  There is a long list of proclamations printed close together in small type.
   Men are no longer permitted to drive cars.

   Men are no longer permitted to own businesses.  Foreign journalists and photographers must be employed by a woman.

   Men are no longer permitted to gather together, even in the home, in groups larger than three, without a woman present.

And so on.  Occasionally, I would remove myself from the story and seize upon my, by now, tokenistic grumble - 'but if only the prose had more of a spark'.  Yet the more that it stayed with me when I wasn't actually reading it, the more that I appreciated it as a vital and important piece of literature.  

Maybe Alderman hints towards the power of the novel's message in her acknowledgements when she remarks upon many of the pseudo-historical illustrations that occasionally appear: "Sometimes I think the whole of this book could be communicated with just this set of facts and illustrations."  One such illustration is startling and made me physically wince (and no, what is described here, is not mere circumcision):

Nb. The 'skein' is the organ at the top of a woman's shoulders that contains her power

My volte-face on journalistic prose probably owes much to what is happening in the world at the moment.  Journalism has always found itself under attack - and in many cases, rightfully so.  But now those attacks are far and wide.  Every time Donald Trump tweets about 'fake news', every time those on the Far Left insist that even left-leaning media can no longer be trusted, is a blow to an industry that is essential to a functioning - even if flawed - democracy.  My eyes roll when friends, from the left and right, unbelievably cite Russia Today as a more trustworthy source of knowledge than the BBC.  "Try telling that to the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya", I want to say.  In a complicated world, direct and unobfuscating prose, delivering an important and clear message, is not to be sneered at.  In The Power, it's no accident that the charismatic young freelancing journalist Tunde is a central character, and in many ways - stripped of physical male power - the moral focus of the novel.  

Silenced - Anna Politkovskaya

Tellingly, the reverse of this argument also strikes me as true. Where prose is concerned, Nabokov is my favourite stylist.  The very act of reading his writing is luxury.  With every jaw-dropping metaphor, every sentence that has been crafted to within an inch of its life - "My pencils outlast their erasers", he famously wrote in Speak, Memory - every image that explodes like a firework upon your consciousness, you are left in no doubt that style is paramount for this writer.  Yet, aside from Lolita - which stays with you for more notorious reasons - I'm hard pushed to recall the general ideas and themes behind the novels and short stories that I have luxuriated in.  Take a random paragraph from Nabokov's oeuvre, and whilst I would immediately recognise it as Nabokov, I would probably find it very difficult to place the work.

Butterflies - Stunning yet ephemeral

Anyway, variety is the spice of life (note to self: cliché should be avoided whatever style of prose you choose), so mixing up the straightforward and rich, and not necessarily expressing a preference, will be my new modus operandi when it comes to reading.  Alderman's haunting book will certainly linger, its ideas fizzing and crackling through the near-future and possibly (hopefully) beyond.  And I might also be ready to revisit Orwell, but this time ignoring a lack of razzle-dazzle and giving full and undivided attention to its sobering and increasingly pertinent message.