Alternate history allows a reader not only to contemplate the past. It also makes one think upon the current culture and contrast its positives and negatives. This is what Kingsley Amis’s novel The Alteration does. It, however, comments on much more: the nature of freedom, dogma, and creativity, and how they interact. This winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award contrasts from the writer’s normally comic literary output. However, even though it’s not as well-known as Lucky Jim and The Old Devils, it’s one of his most thought-provoking novels.

It’s 1976, but the world of The Alteration is very different from the then-contemporary time of our world’s 1976. The Roman Catholic Church powerfully holds sway over the realm of Christendom, often dictating to the nationalistically-weak temporal powers. Technology is less developed, and Europe is in a tense cold war with the Islamic Turks.

How did this world come to be? Two pivotal incidents in our history led to this strange world: Martin Luther, the instigator of the Reformation, became reconciled to the Catholic Church, eventually becoming Pope Germanian I, and Arthur Tudor’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon ended up being fruitful, leading to a papal crusade to fight against Henry of York (Henry VIII in our world), who tried to usurp his nephew’s throne. The Church’s triumph leads to the near extinguishing of incipient Protestantism (Protestantism later flees and establishes itself in North America). This causes the arresting of further revolutions in scientific and political thought that would’ve followed.

This is the world that the novel’s protagonist Hubert Anvil is born in. He’s a ten-year-old boy who possesses a beautiful gift for music, both in singing and in composing. The Church appreciates his beautiful soprano voice, but wants to preserve it past maturity. The only option for this is castration, or as they call it in this world, alteration. Hence, one of the meanings of the novel’s title. As the time approaches for Hubert’s alteration approaches, will he submit to the authority of those desiring this operation? Or will the intrigues within the Church as well as concerns from Protestant representatives from the Republic of New England cause Hubert to change what seems to be his destiny as a castrato in service to Rome?

The narrative’s POV is third-person omniscient, but the focus is on Hubert. It’s quite a change for Amis to have such a young character as the principal character, but he does well in fleshing him out. Hubert is portrayed as innocent as a young boy would likely be, especially under the strictures of his society. However, he is not naïve, as time shows him to be perceptive and inquiring as story’s progresses. He knows that the alteration will nullify a future amorous existence and the prospect of family life even though he has limited knowledge of carnal matters. He realizes that this will lead to his living such a different life as a male after the operation, that by the time of his decision, he contemplates on his potential otherness, and how he would view himself and others would view him.

Amis populates the story with a variety of characters, whose personalities and motives this world’s history and culture has molded. Not all clerics have the same view about what they should do to Hubert. Charity motivates some, ego motivates others, while the rest see him just as a pawn in the struggle for authority within the Church. However, the characters are not cardboard cutout heroes and villains. Even the father of Hubert, who comes across as authoritarian in the beginning, comes out as sympathetic. He, just like the other characters, are who they are because of circumstances. They still though have the choice of making moral decisions despite what the unreasoning authorities may proclaim.

Is this a story of clerical authority run amok? Yes, but it’s much more. As mentioned earlier, the value of creativity when it’s submitted to dogma is another theme. Throughout the novel, there are references to many known creative figures, such as Mozart and Beethoven. We know that in our world that many of their creations were religious pieces, but the authorities did not force these works out of them. However, it’s likely that in the world of The Alteration, the creators do not produce out of religious joy coming from the heart. Instead, it comes from pressure from a Church that wants to control through fear.

Another interesting aspect is that Amis subtly disguises real 20th century political figures by as members of the Church’s hierarchy. These are men who in our world supported socialist, communist, fascist, and Nazi ideologies. What Amis is likely saying is that the desire to control people’s lives goes beyond dogma for those with totalitarian tendencies. It doesn’t matter what the cause or belief is, some just want to stamp down individuality. In a time when there is a creeping “soft” totalitarianism of PC or good-thought dogma, especially in the arts/entertainment field, this novel especially rings true.

Some may hesitate to read the novel because they feel that they lack enough of a historical background.  Or they believe that they’ll fail to understand the sprinkling throughout of Ecclesiastical Latin and religious terminology. Having such knowledge will help the novel come more alive. However, just taking your time to immerse yourself in the narrative will enrich by taking you to a speculative world that is strange but somewhat familiar.

Written by Christopher Fried

http://www.christopherfried.com/

As both a reader and a writer, I enjoy diverse genres of literature.  I however would have to choose mid-20th century British comic fiction as one of my favorites.  Besides various batches of metrical poetry, there is no other genre that brings such a grin to my face.  Whether it is works of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Powell, or this review’s featured writer, Kingsley Amis, I just can’t get enough.  I think this is due to the combination of familiarity and slight estrangement between American and British cultures.  An American reader delving into the British cultural world has journeyed to foreign milieu, but does not feel completely like a stranger in a strange land.  There is a notion of difference, but generally, not a feeling of bewilderment as when one picks up a Japanese or Russian novel without cultural context.

 When compared with other comic writers that emerged during the interbellum and post-World War II period, Kingsley Amis is probably the most accessible to an American reader, or really any English language speaker.  Although British class tension is present in a number of his works, it does not hover like a shadow over the themes as it does in other writers of the same period such as Waugh or Powell.  For one thing, Amis seemed to always fight against the biases of the British establishment, whether when he was a left-leaning basher of posh pretension during the Angry Young Man period of the fifties, or when he became a pro-American conservative in the post-Vietnam era, when it was fashionable for the British literati to declare American power as anathema.  Even in his non-fiction book on grammar, The King’s English, he readily prefers American English to that of his own countrymen as more natural and less stuffy.  Throughout his life he believed that things should be said straight forward and without a lot of bollocks as he might say.

The Old Devils, though written in his later years, shows that Amis had not lost his wit.  In addition, the novel is not just a comic gem, but it shows his most heart since his original masterpiece, Lucky Jim.  He doesn’t hesitate to laugh at the foibles of his characters, but his presentation shows that he cares for them as individual creations.  The story focuses on Welsh couples in their sixties in the mid-1980s as they handle the indignity of old age.  Interestingly, Amis set a number of his novels in Wales.  For some reason, it seems Wales gets a bit of short shrift in terms of British settings chosen by writers; perhaps, the locales of England and Scotland are both more romantic and familiar, but Amis’s prose shows that Wales shouldn’t be forgotten.

 The couples, and other locals, are in a stir because Alun and Rhiannon Weaver have returned home to South Wales after years of celebrity in London.  The Welsh have developed a complex view of Alun: he is both praised and viewed as somewhat of a phony.  Alun is a popular poet, but much of that popularity is based off his living off the legacy of the late, more critically-acclaimed poet Brydan, and his presentation of himself as the prototypical Welshman.  Basically, if a Welsh topic needs a Welsh viewpoint, the London establishment turns to Alun to pontificate on what it means to be Welsh, especially in the modern age.  Though his friends and neighbors are glad that a local son has made it professionally, they are somewhat embarrassed by the bloviating of his subject matter.  It doesn’t help that he is a selfish scoundrel who had affairs with the majority of his friends’ wives, and who begins to commence his bad habits again when he settles back in Wales.

His friends are a loveable but seemingly hopeless lot.  They spend the majority of their day hitting up establishments to indulge their alcoholic tendencies.  They are definitely not picture of good health.  Charles Norris and Peter Thomas are obese, and getting fatter.  Malcolm Cellan-Davies has stomach and teeth issues that are at a point of precariousness.  Their wives seem to have lost whatever love they had for them; it doesn’t help that the seducer Alun is back in town.  The saddest character would definitely be Peter. Fortunately, he gets somewhat of a happy ending at the conclusion of the novel; however, throughout the majority of the story, he is at the critical whims of his wife, who hasn’t been physically attracted to him in years and is at a similar emotional distance.  Some critics say that Amis modeled this portrait on himself, though Amis’s personal traits are found in aspects of all the major male characters. 

The characters try to come to terms with what has been largely wasted years.   They seem to have stopped growing emotionally since the time of their college years.  After an incident in a pub that gets the gang of old friends thrown out, the owner remarks, “You’d think [men that age] have learnt how to behave by this time.”  Looking at the shenanigans that they get themselves in, it is obvious that they haven’t (and neither have their selfish wives), and it costs one of the friends his life near the end of the novel, though you’re not surprised who dies, and it’s quite satisfactory despite your feeling somewhat attached to him by the end.  The story implies that even famous Alun has wasted much of his life.  He is a successful poet, but there is a feeling that his fame rests on being the court jester to a condescending English audience and dull Welsh public.  Does he truly embody the Welsh spirit just as Brydan, and is that something to which he should have tried to attain?  Like many of the other characters, Alun runs toward his Welsh identity and tries running away from it.  This crisis leads him to almost become a stereotype that he wishes to avoid, rather than becoming an individual, who happens to have Welsh heritage.

 This 1986 Man Booker Prize winner is considered to be the prime achievement of Kingsley’s career by his son, the also-acclaimed novelist, Martin Amis.  Though I didn’t bust out laughing as I did with his earlier works like Lucky Jim or One Fat Englishman, I don’t believe that the narrative is any less humorous.  What concerns one in old age is much different than in youth, so there should be no surprise that the style differs somewhat as well.  Reading his earlier works, it can be reasoned that Amis sympathized only slightly with his targets at that time.  Perhaps reflecting on mortality during his older years caused him however to enshroud even the most ridiculous and foolish characters with dignity in this novel.  To me, this increases the novel’s merit as a comic work, as recognition of one’s past regrets are easily more reflected upon as we age, especially when we laugh with each other rather than just at each other.