/ 21 May 2010

Driving without steering

Driving Without Steering

“I had no doubt that something cruel and catastrophic had happened before I was even born, yet the comte and comtesse, my parents, would not tell me what it was.” So begins Peter Carey’s latest novel, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber) as elegant and sophisticated a tale as anyone could hope to read.

Carey narrates with the assurance of the master writer that he is, as a young noble born after the Revolution in France. He rapidly sketches Olivier’s life in the chateau where his parents are in exile from the dangers of Versailles and Paris and introduces the bizarre image of the célérifère, a clumsy wooden prototype of a bicycle without any steering, which one comes to understand as a metaphor for the notion of democracy that is irresistibly going to change the world.

Olivier de Barfleur is based on Alexis de Tocqueville, who became a famous commentator on democracy and the New World of America. Yet for all the complicated metaphors and wry philosophical jests, this is also simply and engagingly the story of two men, Olivier and Parrot, whose lives intersect in their journeys from the old worlds of England and post-revolutionary France to America. Australia is included, too.

The story begins when they are both boys and each narrates his own portion. Carey perfects their separate voices, as well as the syntax and mindset of each. Olivier is the frail and cosseted son of the Comte de Barfleur, awaiting the restoration of the Bourbons and educated by the Abbé de La Londe, his “beloved Bébé” who schools him in Latin, Greek and hunting, shooting and fishing.

Parrot is the son of an itinerant English printer who inadvertently becomes mixed up in the printing of illegal assignats, revolutionary paper currency. Parrot finds himself for a while in Australia, in a story of high adventure, where he learns the skills of the artist and engraver, which, in a democratic milieu, serve to raise him from the class of servant to that of independent entrepreneur.

These two stories intersect in the person of the Marquis de Tilbot, who has many irons in the fire, or burins on the woodblock, when it comes to engravings, both artistic and fraudulent.

Readers of Carey’s novels will know that each one is a world in itself, and remarkably different from the others. But common to many of them is Carey’s examination of filial relations, sons in relation to both fathers and mothers. (He does not seem to do daughters). In this novel we see Olivier with his mother and the abbé, who is a more hands-on father than the comte.

Oliviers mother is an exquisite creature, herself entirely unable to adapt to a democratic future and it is his love and respect for her that holds Olivier back from embracing the new world. Carey presents this with no comment, in contrast to Olivier’s many other comments on the new world, democracy and America specifically.

Although Carey always seems to have one foot in Australia, he has lived in New York for many years, so the dry humour of the latter remarks is especially telling. Olivier says of the coast of Connecticut that it is: “The most shocking monument to avarice one could ever have witnessed, its ancient forests smashed down and carted off for profit.”

He finds some strange metaphors for democracy as practised in America. He delivers a soliloquy to an absent friend on the rocking chair, “that awful monument to democratic restlessness”. And goes on: “In America everyone is in a state of agitation: some to attain power, others to grab wealth, and when they cannot move, they rock—”

Olivier finds himself offered a pistol for protection when he ventures into a rough part of New York. When called on to admire this American patent, he says: “Well it is not the equal of Voltaire, but it is a lovely thing.” And soon he is wondering whether this is “something dazzling and generally much improved, a method of modern government”, as the pistol is offered instead of an accompanying policeman.

Near the end he says of democracy that it has “a truly lovely flower, a tiny tender fruit, but it will not ripen well”. Parrot, however, settles there. Despite all Olivier’s doubts about the possibility of art in a country without an aristocracy to foster and appreciate it, Parrot and his ilk find they have the space and freedom to flourish.

This charming novel offers much to reflect on now that we are so sold on democracy, two centuries on, and South Africans will find the post-revolutionary times interestingly similar to our own.