Abandoned Books

Reviews of books and authors not much discussed on the web.

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Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Short Takes: A. J. Cronin's THE CITADEL

A. J. Cronin was one of those writers that your grandmother might've read, assuming she read anything, of course. A testament to the ephemerality of fame, he was once an extremely well-known writer with a bunch of best sellers and sales to the movies. Now nobody really reads him anymore, although a Catholic press is trying to resurrect The Keys to the Kingdom. I have my doubts, but hey, who knows.

I probably should've gone with Keys, as it's First Things recommending them and they're more right than wrong, typically. Instead I went with The Citadel, which was the only one of his I ever heard of, mainly because years and years ago Masterpiece Theater did an adaptation of it, with Ben Cross as the upwardly striving Dr. Manson.

(Back in the day, boys and girls, Cross was a well-known actor, with Chariots of Fire just behind him and the world at his feet. Now no one remembers who he is, either. Lord, this whole post is an object lesson, huh?)

Cronin's book is a quiet melodrama-cum-social protest novel, as we follow Manson starting out his practice in a repressive Welsh mining town, faces ignorance and prejudice, fights nobly for scientific advancement, suffers nobly, almost loses his soul to Mammon but recovers just at the brink...only to punished and vindicated within a few pages of each other at the climax.

It's pretty blah. Although rather better written than later examples of its type, like most novels of its type it gets pretty shrill in spots. The kind of book where people stand up and give self-conscious speeches Expressing The Point.

You'll be able to predict the twists and the turns of the thing rather easily, too, and the poor things that are done to the long-suffering wife in order to fulfill Cronin's Grand Plan makes me weep for the fate of such doomed cardboard characters.

It's not an awful book: Cronin had a certain degree of literacy that later popular writers mining this lode didn't, and it shows -- the style burbles along well and it isn't insulting to read. He's particularly good with sketches of the Welsh countryside and the small incidents of a doctor's life. I've encountered worse.

Here's the First Things piece on Keys:

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=306

I dunno. I respect First Things, it's an intelligent publication, but this seems like a case of special pleading to me. Still, adventurous souls can check it out. I think the notion of Cronin as a skillful hack is essentially right on the money.

Here's the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.J._Cronin

Our man looks pretty dashing here, I think. Like a young Richard Attenborough.

And here's the always literate kirjasto entry:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ajcronin.htm

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