Literary fiction

John Sayles sets out with a huge canvas to fill, and it is the fortunes of the Ford motor company from the end of the Great War to the uncertain times of a post-war world where both Hitler and Hirohito have been humbled, but Stalin remains the one world leader with unassailable power.

The key points of the early pages are the stock market crash of 1929 and Henry Ford’s bizarre attempt to buy up swathes of Amazonian rain forest to produce his own rubber. The Americans sent out there are overwhelmed by a number of factors, including the human problems that hundreds of indigenous peasants are unable to adapt to Henry Ford’s production line work ethic, and the purely botanical fact that rubber trees are not a quickly growing commodity yielding instant rewards. Ford has despatched his minions to the Brazilian jungle to produce cheap rubber. He has no concept of the place. This is not a treasure trove of natural wonder described in a whispered David Attenborough voice-over. It is – for the Americans – a hell slithering with giant ants, poisonous spiders, caimans that will rip the arm off an unwary dabbler, ferocious heat, endless rain, decay, and the sense that humans are, at best, merely clinging on to life by their fingernails.

John Sayles has painted a picture of Henry Ford, warts and all, which both appalls and captivates.Does Sayles take sides? Yes, of course he does, given his CV, but his partiality does not diminish the power of his prose. There is a deep irony, however, when we read of the funeral procession for the left wing activists killed in an anti Ford protest march. Simultaneously, thousands of miles away, Stalin was systematically starving millions of Ukrainians with one hand, while butchering political opponents with the other, all in the name of the Great Socialist Ideal which the idealistic American marches seem to be calling for. Sayles’ narrative points up this and many other many ironies and moral dilemmas for historians. The chief example, for me, was that of the human brutality of the industrial process which, for us Brits, began in the remorseless cotton mills and iron foundries centuries ago.

Here, in 1930s Detroit, the assembly line is unrelenting and unforgiving: a momentary lapse of concentration can destroy a man’s leg, his hands, or his sight. There was no such thing as Health and Safety in the middle years of the 20th century. And yet, and yet. Were things any better in Stalin’s Soviet Union? Were his political commissars and better than Harry Bennett’s thugs? The novel will be on the shelves labeled ‘fiction’, but is peopled by real life characters almost too outrageous to have been invented by a mere author. We have Ford himself, a strange mix of psychopath and philanthropist; Harry Bennett, his unscrupulous enforcer who would have been at home working for Reynhardt Heydrich; Jerry Buckley, the charismatic radio host assassinated in 1930.

Crucible is a reminder that, amidst all the formulaic production line American fiction that sells by the million on supermarket shelves, there are still good writers out there.’sprawling’and ‘epic’ were adjectives once used to describe novels or films with huge breadth and compass. In this sense, Crucible certainly ‘sprawls, but along the way Sayles pens a kind of love letter to the racial and cultural blend of ordinary people who were striving to become Americans by taking Henry Ford’s dollar, the Sicilians, the dirt-poor Blacks forced to emigrate north, the ex-European Jews, the resilient Poles, the flint-hard Scots and their Irish cousins. In his afterword, however Sayles eschews sentimentality, particularly in view of the savage Detroit race riots of 1943:

“..enormous social and economic forces rushed together in that city, making it more a high-pressure crucible than a genteel American melting pot.”

For all that Henry Ford is not one of history’s most lovable characters, we should not forget his pragmatism. Criticised by many then and now for his apparent Nazi sympathies, we must not forget that it was his factories which produced the B24 Liberator bombers, the thousands of jeeps and Sherman tanks which helped bring about the fall of the Third Reich.

Crucible is a magnificent novel. The publicist warned me that it was ‘rather long’, but not a page, paragraph or sentence dragged. As a portrait of mid 20th century America, it is simply astonishing. Published by Melville House, it is available now.

TAXONOMY – The current taxonomic system now has eight levels in its hierarchy, from lowest to highest, they are: species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain.

I throw in this apparently random piece of information merely to suggest that An Honest Living does not fit easily into a genre, and many readers, especially of crime fiction, love genres and little compartments into which books can be placed. This is the story of a New York lawyer, apparently the author himself, who becomes involved in a complex case involving arcane transcripts of historic legal cases. Sounds dull? Yes, probably, but the actual content transcends the banal description. This is, in no particular order, a love poem to a 2000s New York City that, two decades later, has all but disappeared. It is an account of a decent man drawn into a complex conspiracy. It tells of men and women who, despite their elevated social status, can act with the veniality and simple greed of lesser mortals.

Our man has left a well-paid corporate legal position to work for himself, trusting in his innate skills to keep the bills paid. When he is hired by the estranged wife of a prominent bibliophile to denounce the man as a scoundrel, he accepts the case – and the bundle of high value notes – with alacrity. A few weeks later, when the man’s wife is exposed as a fraud – and Newton Reddick’s real wife appears on the scene, Murphy is in a world of trouble. As it happens, he gets away without being sued for libel, and he also gets to keep the cash. More importantly, however, he establishes a relationship with Anna Reddick, a successful author writing under the pseudonym AM Byrne.

When Newton Reddick is found hanged in a seedy hotel, matters take a distinctly sinister turn. Is there a connection with Anna Reddick’s father, a rich but not-entirely-honest businessman?

Although I enjoyed the book, I would take issue with the back cover blurb which calls the novel “hard-boiled”. If you are expecting anything resembling Noir as in, say, Jim Thompson, Ted Lewis or Derek Raymond you will not find it. This is much more delicate stuff and we are taken on a stylish and nostalgic meander through the streets and districts of New York as it was two decades ago, in the company of some intriguing characters, whose vicissitudes we share. Published by No Exit Press, this edition is available now.