While reading this book, I had occasion to Google “Irish Murdoch Christian,” as certain bits of the text made me curious. (At least according to Wikipedia, she referred to herself as a “Christian Buddhist,” so that you need not repeat my own diligent scholarly efforts in this regard.) A review of her novel Nuns and Soldiers came up, a review that bears the snarky title “A Romance for Highbrows.” Because the author of the review, George Stade, writes that Nuns and Soldiers is “the epitome and sum” of her other works I feel that it is perfectly reasonable to defend against his charges here. Stade takes issue with what he sees as a kind of watered-down, equivocal kind of pseudo-Christianity: “Secular love is the efficient cause of what goes on in her novels…On the other hand, Iris Murdoch is a neo-Christian apologist. Her fictions, I mean, argue a Christianity that has become so much more interesting, don't you know, since God took a powder, a Christianity that substitutes a diffuse religiosity for a formulated religion, that approves your faith according to the rigor of your disbelief.”Whereas a diffuse and unclear philosophy in a work of nonfiction is vexing, it seems like an odd charge to make against a novel. Novels are not necessarily multivalent, but one of the chief virtues of novels is how they can give emotional content to experiences that may be inaccessible to the reader because of her own philosophical situation. One need never have taken Communion to understand how profaning it would break Major Scobie’s heart in Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. A gift of fiction is that it grants us access to the emotional life of people whose entire belief structure is different than our own. To ask that a novel present a precise model of the proper role of romantic and divine loves, or that its characters be free of emotional and spiritual muddle, is to ask that a novel give an inaccurate portrait of experience.In The Nice and the Good, which is quite suspenseful at points but is, finally, a comedy, it is hard not to query Murdoch’s beliefs (hence my Googling) because her notion of the divine at times seems patently Christian. John Ducane is a terrific character who grapples with the warring demands of kindness and correctness, and whose queasiness at his own weakness (he doesn’t have the strength of his worst desires or his more noble ones) makes him both likable and, somehow, admirable. The book opens with the suicide of his colleague Radeechy, which he is tasked to investigate. His puzzling (to my bourgeois mind) romantic but asexual relationship with a married woman is initially where he locates purity in his life, because she brings him joy without the muddle inherent in sexual relationships, and the creeping moral anxiety that attends his investigation of Radeechy’s death has the effect of making much in his life feel tainted, and his efforts to free himself from the taint are part of what make the book so fun to read. (He also stars in one of the more suspenseful scenes I've read in a long time, but I wouldn't want to oversell it because it comes near the end and this is not a book that is worth reading for the its intrigue, which is mildly disappointing overall.)The portrait of Kate (Ducane’s married woman) is vibrant; there is a bungled breakup scene at the beginning of the novel that is wrenching, and one that most readers can probably identify with as having been on both sides; and there are lots of flowers, and city mugginess, and charming animals. All of this has an impressionistic force that must animate Stade’s disdain, but I think it gives a clear picture of the kind of labored and jumbled philosophizing that may be the only option in a life crowded with cars and whiskey and flesh and offices and pebbles and cats.
I’m not getting on too well with Iris Murdoch. Under the Net went pretty much over my head. The Bell was a good read. And this one falls somewhere in between. It had moments when I was glad I was reading it. Whole chapters even. But, on the whole, I found myself labouring through it and counting how many pages I had to go.It begins well enough. I thought we were going to plunge right into a murder-mystery within the halls of a government department. But soon were were at some house in the country with what seemed like a commune of characters I couldn’t keep track of. There are various love triangles and not a few sex triangles. In fact, it seems she had a hard time keeping any of her characters out of bed at all.The novel jumped around a bit too much for my liking. I wasn’t sure until about halfway through who I was really supposed to be focussing on. And, apart from a rather well-written piece involving a cave at high tide, I wasn’t really captivated at any point.This was nominated for the Booker Prize so that got me thinking as to why. Usually, Booker Prize winners have deeply drawn characters who suffer a variety of inner and outer conflicts. And, so it proves: Ducane is just such a character. You feel his conflict as he leads a double life for most of the novel. The others though didn’t really move from 2D to 3D for me.All in all, this is not one of her best I don’t think. Read The Bell instead.
What do You think about The Nice And The Good (1978)?
This novel is the most philosophical writing of Iris; according to the Socratic quest for the good man ('What is a good man like?) the better character, who try to fix this question is Ducane and his moralistic problems. What is morality? are we able to be impartial? if not we need of God or we must be good?According to the following phrase the humanity is unable to judges the others:'...the whole situation of judging was abhorrent to him. He had watched his judges closely, and had come to the conclusion that no human being is worthy to be a judge. (The Nice and the Good, Iris Murdoch, page 76, Vintage Classics)Obviously none knows the right reply, but this is possible, only in a novel where the writer, is able to create the bad and the good, the false and the true, in other words this is a simple and pure mental exercise for a writer and her/his readers for a better and fair world.The painting above represents the mystery of love intended as a good or bad behaviour, a perfect example of the pleasure and pain of Ducan and "his women."In conclusion for a better life, we should follow the philosophy of the Occam's Razor, in other words we should to try to simplify our life, mainly because the human being, is not able to give reasonable responses to the mystery of our life.
—Italo Perazzoli
Rain is pattering down on the roof and in my hair is wet because we've just been for a walk in the rain. Thats reality. Unreality is the world of books where you're invited to suspend belief for while and imagine the raindrops in your hair. Iris Murdock can do this with the ease of a dog scratching fleas. In the this way, The Nice and The Good is a work of utter genius. Be it kids or adults Murdock gtes inside them as no one else can, delving about their psyches like a mischievous imp. There is no sense of self-the writers not there, no one's cavorting and preening- she's got a bunch of interesting characters and a story and she just gets on with it.Throughout, the ghost of the Murdock in "Iris and Her Friends" by her husband John Bayley, hovers. It is a sad end, a mind thats just let go, an elderly brain in the grip of alzheimers. You can't help thinking of it as you read- she's so generous with her imagination, and in the end its her imagination that lets her down.Read this book and delve into the lives of others. Read it and be intrigued by a masterful plot. Above all, suspend disbelief- those raindrops in your hair are real. I love Iris.
—C.S. Boag
I just don't know what it is with Iris Murdoch novels. I simply can't tell them apart. And I can't explain why. She's smart. She writes well. I like her, and I've read most of her books. I've got a good memory, and I can usually do this kind of thing. For example, I generally find it quite easy to say which Bond film a given incident belongs to. But Iris Murdoch? Sorry.It's not just me either. I recall this incident at a party in Manchester, some time in the winter of 1977. I'd just gone through a phase of reading a lot of Murdoch, so it was all fresh in my memory. I was talking to this girl, that I'd just met and rather liked. She seemed to like me. She'd also read a lot of Murdoch. We had every reason to use our memories of Murdoch novels to deepen our new friendship.And yet... neither of us could remember a damn thing about them. "Have you read The Nice and the Good?" I asked, or whichever novel it was. "Oh, is that the one with the blackmailer?" she replied. Damn! I couldn't remember. And neither could she. We tried several times, and it was always the same. We felt like idiots, and our relationship was over before it had even started.But, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming Iris. It's my fault, not hers.
—Manny
