 First British edition cover | |
| Author | Iris Murdoch |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | John Sergeant [1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 402 pp |
| ISBN | 0701115343 |
| OCLC | 611501179 |
A Fairly Honourable Defeat is a novel by the British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Published in 1970, it was her thirteenth novel.
The lives of several friends are thrown into disarray by the machinations of Julius King. Julius makes a bet with his ex-girlfriend Morgan that he can break up the homosexual couple Axel and Simon; meanwhile, Morgan and her brother-in-law Rupert are tricked into embarking on an affair, and Morgan's nephew Peter is falling in love with her.
The story hinges on the wager that comes half-way through the book when Julius bets Morgan that he will be able to break up Simon and Axel's relationship. The consequences of the wager recall Shakespearean comedy (particularly Much Ado About Nothing ), as well as Mozart's operas and the story of Job. [2] : 207–209
The gap between moral theory and practice is central to the book, and is exemplified by Rupert's inability to withstand temptation, despite having written a book about morality. [2] : 215 Julius is a satanic figure, while Tallis is represented as Christ-like, since he absorbs suffering while Julius sows it. [3] The underlying idea, which Murdoch adopted from Simone Weil, is that evil is propagated in the world by the transmission of suffering from one person to another, and that it can only be stopped by someone's being willing to accept the suffering without passing it on. [4]
The relationship between Simon and Axel, which survives Julius's attempt to destroy it, is one of many portrayals of homosexuals in Murdoch's novels. According to Philip Hensher, their relationship is "one of the most convincing and warm portrayals of marriage in English fiction". [5]
A Fairly Honourable Defeat received mixed reviews on its publication in 1970. In The New York Times , Christopher Lehmann-Haupt praised its ingenious plot and "comic spirit", and called it "the most entertaining Iris Murdoch I've read in years". [6] Another The New York Times review remarked on the improbability of the plot, but considering the book as primarily a novel of ideas, found it "one of the most enjoyable and interesting of Iris Murdoch's recent books". [4] On the other hand, writing in The Times , Nuala O'Faolain objected to an absence of sympathetic characters, while in The Washington Post Joyce Carol Oates found the characters "vacuous". [7] [8]
The literary critic and Murdoch biographer Peter J. Conradi describes A Fairly Honourable Defeat as a "brilliant and decisive masterpiece", and the novel with which she entered a "new artistic maturity" in which plot and characters are equally balanced. [2] : 201–202 Literary scholars have examined various aspects of the novel, including its attempt to portray, in Tallis, an "interesting" good character, and its sympathetic depiction of a loving and stable homosexual relationship only three years after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalized private sexual acts between adult men. [3] [9]
In 2010 A Fairly Honourable Defeat was one of the 21 novels on the long list for the Lost Man Booker Prize, but it did not appear on the short list of six from which the winner was chosen. [10]
In 2022 British religious scholar Karen Armstrong said she left a book club when its members dismissed the novel as "evil." [11]
Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American businessman, media proprietor, and investor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK, in Australia, in the US, book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News. He was also the owner of Sky, 21st Century Fox, and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world.
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt, is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner, and won the 2017 Park Kyong-ni Prize. In 2008, The Times named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
The Red and the Green is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1965, it was her ninth novel. It is set in Dublin during the week leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916, and is her only historical novel. Its characters are members of a complexly inter-related Anglo-Irish family who differ in their religious affiliations and in their views on the relations between England and Ireland.
Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice is an essay by British writer Anthony Burgess, published by Allison & Busby in 1984. It covers a 44-year span between 1939 and 1983. Burgess was a prolific reader, in his early career reviewing more than 350 novels in just over two years for the Yorkshire Post. In the course of his career he wrote more than 30 novels.
Sparkling Cyanide is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1945 under the title of Remembered Death and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the December of the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6).
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Vintage Classics is a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. It is part of the Vintage imprint, which is itself a part of Random House Publishers. The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House. Vintage in the UK is run by a small team of people working in the Random House offices in Pimlico in London.
The Bell is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1958, it was her fourth novel. It is set in a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire.
The Unicorn is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1963, it was her seventh novel.
The Message to the Planet is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1989, it was her twenty-fourth novel.
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The Nice and the Good is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1968, it was her eleventh novel. The Nice and the Good was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize.
An Unofficial Rose is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1962, it was her sixth novel.
The Sovereignty of Good is a book of moral philosophy by Iris Murdoch. First published in 1970, it comprises three previously published papers, all of which were originally delivered as lectures. Murdoch argued against the prevailing consensus in moral philosophy, proposing instead a Platonist approach. The Sovereignty of Good is Murdoch's best known philosophy book.
Henry and Cato is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1976, it was her eighteenth novel.
An Accidental Man is a novel by Iris Murdoch, which was published in 1971. It was her fourteenth novel.
The Time of the Angels is a philosophical novel by British novelist Iris Murdoch. First published in 1966, it was her tenth novel. The novel centres on Carel Fisher, an eccentric Anglican priest who is the rector of a London church which was destroyed by bombing during World War II. Fisher denies the existence of God and the possibility of human goodness in a post-theistic world. The novel, which has elements of Gothic fiction, received mixed reviews on its publication.
TalkTV is a British television channel owned and operated by News UK. It launched on 25 April 2022.
Murdoch was fascinated by homosexuals, whose lives are the product of an ethical choice in a way that those of heterosexuals are not.
Her people are mostly funny, and she has folded her pessimism into the best-made plot since the death of well-made plays.
Pullen, Charles H. (1987). "A Fairly Honourable Defeat". Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series. Salem Press. pp. 483–487.