There’s a lot to discuss about this novel, but I think I’ll stick with the narrative style. I picked up an old 1955 copy of this, which instead of an introduction had what was titled, “An Interpretation” by Mark Schorer (with whom, I must admit, I am entirely unfamiliar). I was quite skeptical of this “interpretation” and remain in disagreement with much of it, but Schorer does say something about the narrative style I like a lot:

“As a novel, The Good Soldier is like a hall of mirrors, so constructed that, while one is always looking straight ahead at a perfectly solid surface, one is made to contemplate not the bright surface itself, but the bewildering maze of past circumstances and future consequence that—somewhat falsely—it contains” (vii).

On one level, Schorer here is talking about a rather simple theme of the novel, something undergraduates might describe as “things are not what they seem” – that is, the aspect of the novel that’s about how things that seem perfect rarely are, and are usually more corrupt because of that apparent perfection. However, that’s not the main thing that interests me. Rather, what I find compelling is Schorer’s use of the hall of mirrors and maze imagery, because that metaphor quite beautifully describes the narrative style. The one thing I disagree with is that “one is always looking straight ahead” because I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that forced me so much to look askance. (In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “askance” before.) I’ve read circular narratives before, and I suppose that’s the category this would fall into, but I think of it more as a sideways narrative—I feel like everything was always happening, somehow, over my shoulder. This is why I like the hall of mirrors imagery so much – because in a hall of mirrors, even if you are looking forward, you are constantly, disturbingly aware of that peripheral vision.

“Is all this digression or isn’t it digression?” (14) asks the narrator, and of course, both are correct; the entire story is a series of digressions, but the sort in which we live our whole lives. There are a great many twists and turns in this novel, but I don’t think of them as twists of plot (though, in a sense, they are), but rather of twists in narration. I can’t remember how many times I was reading along thinking one thing, only to discover suddenly that the narrator actually felt quite differently than he’d been claiming, or that he harbored some secret from the reader.

One of my favorite things about the novel is how it tricked me into reading further on the promise that if I read the whole thing, I’d know “the truth.” And indeed, when I got nearly to the end, I found a very convincing, rather straightforward interpretation of all that had happened, and thought to myself, “ah, this is what it’s all about, the way convention kills originality, and it’s so true.” But after this revelation, the novel continued for a few more pages. It was only later, when I thought about it more, that I realized how silly I had been. Why did I think this particular revelation was “the truth” more than anything else? Why should I believe the narrator at the end any more than at the beginning, when he has changed his opinion and switched his allegiances and shown himself to be in a deep state of denial throughout? Because it was at the end? The joke was on me… and I loved it.