I’m currently reading “The Far Country,” by Neville Shute. I’ve read several other works by him and am routinely impressed by his ability to spin a good yarn. His characters are not heavily polarized and he provides many different angles of view within the frame of a given story. His style of writing is rather engaging without pandering to the reader at all. While he does not possess the fantastic economy of style that W. Somerset Maugham is justly famous for, Shute still has a pleasing degree of brevity. It is also rather apparent that he backed his work with a fair degree of research.
His book, “An Old Captivity” convincingly details historical aspects of archaeological work in Greenland. As an aviation specialist, his references to flight related matters are especially convincing. He manages to intermingle his plots with factual material and fictional characters in such a way as to render both in a three dimensional aspect. His strong engineering background still does not inhibit any introduction of emotional content. The characters in “On the Beach” are intensely evocative and yet the story’s palpable sense of doom does not override a sense of immediacy while reading it. He manages to obtain a delicate balance of intimacy and overarching context that few other authors elicit.
It is difficult not to admire his extensive travel. He used many of his trips to gather material for subsequent stories. Before moving his family to Australia in 1950, he flew the entire distance in a two-seater. This was done with little time logged as a pilot. During his travels, he chanced to meet Mrs. Geysel-Vonck who survived being marched for 2,000 miles around Indonesia by the occupying Japanese. This provided Shute with the final component of his famous work, “A Town Like Alice,” which was inspired by a visit to Alice Springs in January of 1949. Throughout Shute’s work there is an undercurrent that exalts the indomitability of human spirit. This is bracketed by both compassion and a true to life honesty which makes his stories assume a reality that so frequently escapes less competent writers.
Ooooh, I love Neville Shute, and he’s safely dead, so I can talk about him! His most famous book is probably On the Beach, but I prefer his more languid character studies: A Town Like Alice, The Far Country, No Highway . . .
Eve, what did you think of Brian Brown’s acting? I feel he is somewhat akin to a modern day Bogart. His taciturn manner and restrained (yet definitely existent) emotion really evoke memories of that great star.
I thought the new film production was incredibly faithful to the book. It refrained from an all to easy villification of the Japanese and instead lent a human face to the poor guard who marched the women all over Indonesia. I believe Shute intended that to be so in the book as well. He did not refrain from showing the occupier’s brutality one whit, but was fair enough to balance things. That film remains one of my all time favorite movies, just as Shute is one of my most favorite authors. I would be hard pressed to think of a better way to be introduced to Shute’s work than through that particular movie.
How would you compare Shute to W. Somerset Maugham?
I liked Shunt’s It all happened on the 11.20 from Hainault to Redhill via Horsham and Reigate, calling at Carshalton Beeches, Malmesbury, Tooting Bec, and Croydon West.
I’ve never gotten around to reading any of his his books, but I did see On The Beach (the 1959 movie) and A Town Like Alice (both versions) many years ago. Both good stories.
He died inn 1960, just 11 days before I was born.
Trivia: his full name was Nevil Shute Norway and he was one of the engineers who designed the British zeppelin R-100.
Shute’s widow metioned how her husband claimed one of Stanley Kramer’s gratuitous sex scenes in “On the Beach” caused him near fatal levels of stress. Not having seen the movie I can only assume there might have been some implied necrophilia during one of the suicide scenes.
Rather amusingly, Brian Brown reprised Fred Astaire’s role as the remorseful race car driving atomic scientist in the 2000 remake by “Highlander” director Russell Mulcahy. However, some Australians were less than amused by Kramer’s depiction of cosmopolitan Melbourne as some sort of outback cowtown, complete with horse drawn carriages.
Shute Norway carried away rather bitter feelings from his early work on dirigibles. The R-100 design team was purposefully not invited to the funeral for the R-101 crew killed in a French crash. Shute Norway waited streetside for three hours with hundreds of thousands of other Britons for the cortege to pass.
