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And on to A. E. Coppard 4/17/2016 4:53:04 PM
I.
In retirement from full-time employment, I've recently taken on the task of reading books I've bought over the years and haven't yet read. A quick survey told me that that many of these books are American novels and collections of short stories.
I'm about halfway through a volume of tales by the English writer A. E. Coppard that I bought decades ago while I was still in high school.
I've known that Coppard is considered a master story-writer, but this is the first time I've become acquainted with his work. Casual research tells me that he was from a poor family and went to work for a tailor when he was nine years old. Other than that, I don't know details.
I read a few pages about Coppard in Frank O'Connor's classic about short stories called "The Lonely Voice". He saw in Coppard's writing, among other things, a love for freedom and buckets of whining about the conditions of poor people and their children.
Though O'Connor may be right, I didn't notice whining until he pointed it out. Instead, I saw a unique and original achievement. Coppard demonstrates to his readers that a writer doesn't need an abundance of worldly advantages to create excellent work. A writer needs an open, receptive mind, willingness to learn and to work hard, and the persistence that allows talent to grow.
Coppard's impoverished upbringing surely gave him at least one advantage, aside from life-material to work with. As the story "Luxury" indicates, he was able to pass through lean periods without fear and discouragement. He didn't grow up expecting life to shower him with earthly blessings. Neither did he expect literary communities to open their doors to him. In other words, he didn't become accustomed to currying favor with cliques and self-appointed masters.
II.
Because I suspect that you're as unfamiliar with Coppard's work as I was a month ago, I'm including four brief passages from the 19 stories I've read so far.
From the first story in the volume, "The Higgler": "The marriage was a gay little occasion, but they did not go away for a honeymoon. Sophy's grandmother from a distant village...., who had a deafness and a speckled skin, brought her third husband...., whom the family had never seen before. Not a very wise man, indeed he was a common man, stooping like a decayed tree, he was so old. But he shaved every day and his hairless skull was yellow."
From the start of a story called "Dusky Ruth": "At the close of an April day, chilly and wet, the traveller came to a country town. In the Cotswolds, though the towns are small and sweet and the inns snug, the general habit of the land is bleak and bare. He had newly come upon upland roads so void of human affairs, so lonely, that they might have been made for some forgotten uses by departed men, and left to the unwitting passage of such strangers as himself."
A snatch of dialogue from "The Presser": "You're a weeny little chap. What's you're age?"
Her hands were shiny and lumpy; she was thin, but she had a plump behind.
"I'm ten years," replied the flustered boy.
"God's my mercy! You ought to be at school, your age."
"I'm not well," said Johnny.
"Nobody's well in this world. We're all alike."
The old woman hawked and spat into her snuffy handkerchief. "What's the matter with you?"
"I don't know," Johnny Flynn confessed.
"How d'ye know you're not well, then?"
"I can feel," said Johnny.
"What can you feel?"
"In my liver," the boy whispered. "Inch and half lower than it ought to be, and we can't alter it. My mother's a widow."
Finally, from "My Hundredth tale": "As I was walking home through the town one night it was windily snowing and I waited at a bookseller's shop that had an open window under an awning. Pictures delighted me more, but I had always been fond of books, any sort of book that could be read at all. If it could be borrowed, well and good, for I could never afford more than a twopenny purchase.Snow drifted on some of the shelves not covered by a sack, the gas flames roared in the draught, the bookseller's name was Kisstruck, and my feet were cold,..."
III.
For me, the point is not only that Coppard's characters are poor or given to whining, but also that most of them do what they want without foresight or a sense of service or mission or neighborliness or mature love. They don't escape the consequences of their choices. That can happen at any economic level.
A second point is that Coppard successfully conveyed humane, clear, consistent pictures of a corner of life from the privacy of his own mind to countless numbers of people he would never know. His name isn't on the tips of many tongues, I suspect, but he did his work well and surely there are readers scattered here and there about the world who are deriving pleasure and satisfaction from his tales.
