A disclaimer! I don’t claim to have brilliant taste in movies and so Titanic by James Cameron is one of my favourites. When I was 17 and in the first throes of love, the film gave me an insight in to another world both opulent and past and this book by Beryl Bainbridge has just done the same thing once again. The power of the word as well as the image to conjure up something magical should never be underestimated but the setting is where the similarity ends between book and film. Every Man For Himself is a rich satire of upper class existence that could have leaked out of the pen of Evelyn Waugh himself. The characters, though for the most part real people long gone, are dealt with brutally by the author as shallow, vacuous types, intent on living a debauched life of intoxication, ignorance (blissful or otherwise) and decadence. They feel little shame, lack morality and human decency and are an illuminated image of the bright young things of the British and American elite before the First World War. The book centres around a distant, fictional relation to the financier J P Morgan who describes himself as being central to events rather than seeing them happen. He is a man finding himself and is still unsure of what his future should be; keen to listen to his betters but keen as well to forge his own path but lacking the wherewithal to do so. Sexually inexperienced and socially retarded, we almost sympathise with him, an almost that appears not for any other central character. The satire develops grandly among the corridors and restaurants of the luxurious upper decks with small references every once in a while to unsinkability and “the future” for those whom we know [spoiler alert] will soon perish in the freezing black hollow of the Atlantic Ocean. Two things are key to the story – the steerage classes are largely absent from the narrative, showing the absolute obliviousness the central characters have to the majority of the passengers on board. Their lack of acknowledgement of their fellow human beings, even towards the end is in passing and brief and this is mirrored deliberately in the plot. Secondly, and refreshingly, the sinking of the ship does not take centre stage; it is not until the final 50 or so pages that we learn of the ship hitting an iceberg, once we are fully invested (or not) in the characters and their purposeless lives. One interesting part of the book is the references to J P Morgan’s real life absence from the Titanic’s maiden voyage for which is was scheduled to attend. Along with other small references to certain pieces of the ship being labelled with “RMS Olympic”, Titanic’s sister ship suggests that Bainbridge may subscribe to the famed conspiracy theory which suggests J P Morgan deliberately had the ship sunk. The story goes that the Olympic had collided with a Naval ship not long before and was permanently damaged but the captain was also at fault for the incident so Lloyds refused to pay out on the insurance claim. Morgan then has the Olympic repainted as the Titanic and sank it while the actual Titanic lived on under the name Olympic. The theory gains ground when we’re told the fellow bankers and financiers that were on board happened to be all the ones opposing Morgan’s plan to create a Federal Reserve Bank, and that Morgan not only didn’t go on the journey but advised several friends not to go aboard. He also had a selection of works of art he was supposed to be transporting to the US removed from the ship at the last minute. Mine is not to suggest any truth to this, merely to point out that it is alluded to in the book. If you are looking for a rip-roaring tale of derring-do at sea; heroism and romance then this is not a book you will enjoy. If you are looking for expert mockery of class on its last legs set against the backdrop of one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history then you will love it. I did; it has subtlety, grace, power, disgust and empathy and if, like me, you find the whole Titanic story alluring then it will envelop you wholly as it did me.
Last week, I picked up Beryl Bainbridge's Whitbread Novel Award-winning Every Man for Himself: a short, dramatic novel set on the doomed RMS Titanic. Through the eyes of an orphan-turned-rich-upper-class man in his early twenties, we see the days leading up to the great ship's demise in the Atlantic.Let me just say, I, like many others, am quite obsessed by the Titanic story. I am also incredibly freaked out by the coincidences associated with a novel written 14 years before the ship ever took its maiden voyage, which tells the story of a ship called Titan that sinks in the Atlantic after striking an iceberg.I mean, seriously.So it was a no-brainer to pick up my first Bainbridge novel considering it had won such a prestigious award and it was based on the events of a tragedy that still enrages me even though it happened 100 years ago.A book based on a true storyThe eeriness of largely knowing how a story is going to end cannot be understated. It was the same when I watched the Titanic movie, which came out the same year as this book, by the way. You know the ship is going to sink -- you just don't know which of the characters you're getting to know will die.I did feel a lot of compassion for Morgan. He's in love with a girl who messes him around. He's surrounded by high-class dolts and while he fits in all right, he's still just a normal young man in his twenties who's trying to find his place in the world. He misses his sister and longs to know more about his parents. He wants a career, but he doesn't know in what yet. He pities the poor but doesn't really bother to help them.Morgan is, in fact, pretty normal. That being said, he's also a frustrating mess to experience this story through. He often makes a decision and then changes his mind within minutes. He sees the injustices between the upper and lower classes, but he remains quiet.There is a rather large cast of characters for such a small novel, and it painstakingly takes us through each day leading up to the sinking of the ship, which is really only covered in the last quarter of the novel.While there were some clever moments, and some interesting dialogue, and while Bainbridge obviously researched this novel thoroughly and provided some details I've never seen before, I was sort of bored. I mean, I knew it was going to sink. The whole time, the only suspense in the story was knowing it was going to sink, which had nothing to do with the author's mastery of suspense but more so with my knowledge of the real events.I did have a rush of rage when they clambered into lifeboats and these stupid people refused to get in because they were so certain the boat wouldn't really sink and they didn't want to tear their dresses. I voiced anger several times as third-class passengers were barred from the lifeboats while their high-class counterparts wouldn't even put on life preservers and the boats were lowered with only a quarter capacity.There weren't enough lifeboats for everyone on board, but so many more lives could have been saved if people hadn't been such idiots.Bainbridge handles all these events well, inducing the appropriate level of fury as we watch lives uselessly wasted. I think she captures the lives and cares of the upper class and gives a realistic portrayal of what it must have been like on that ship.I'm not sure why, then, that I'm left without any regret of finishing the book. That, to me, is what separates good books from great ones -- when I just don't want it to end. With Every Man for Himself, I didn't mind in the least when the last page came along.
Do You like book Every Man For Himself (1997)?
Just like the other Bainbridge books I've read, this is a short tale dense with sharp observations and moments of odd, often dark humor. In this case, the narrator is a disaffected member of the upper class, and his viewpoint allows us to observe the behavior of the wealthy passengers of the Titanic as the inevitable tragedy looms.More than for plot, I enjoy Bainbridge's books for their regular servings of commentary on the human condition. I often find myself stopping to ponder some assertion of the narrator or one of the characters. These are not ponderous philosophical statements so much as they are surprisingly true summaries of our flaws and foibles.Plus, in this case, a huge, huge ship goes down. So there's that.
—Fred
I wonder if reading this book before Cameron's calculated tear-jerker came out was even more affecting than it was reading it afterwards. Like re-reading Pride & Prejudice this days and trying to keep the text separate from the filmic palimpsest that's layered over top of it, reading 'Every Man for Himself' without seeing Kate and Leonardo running about the place is almost impossible.The protagonist - an un-named young man closely but mysteriously attached to J Pierpont Morgan - also reminded me hugely of the ill-starred young people of Waugh's 'Vile Bodies'. He half-sees and half-understands the complex relationships he moves through as he negotiates the first-class passengers, and observes those on lower decks. His role is primarily to tell the stories of those around him, and over four short, feverish days he holds you gripped until the inevitable end.Next I'm seeking out 'The Birthday Boys'.
—Courtney Johnston
The multiple Oscar-winning film, Titanic, appeared in 1997. Whether Beryl Bainbridge’s novel, Every Man For Himself, was already in the planning before that movie was cenceived is a matter open to conjecture or the biographer. Even if the novelist chose the subject deliberately to coincide with the launch of a blockbuster, the novel has to be read on its own considerable merits, which did indeed include a Whitbread Prize, a nomination for a Booker and a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. The book’s subject matter, however, might at first sight, and especially now that we are so familiar with the feature film, suggest repetition or mere cliché. After all, what more is there to be said about an event that has already been done to death in multimedia? In attempting such a project, a novelist of the stature of Beryl Bainbridge might have run the risk of being seen to court populism or, even, worse, triteness. But Every Man For Himself succeeds. It transcends all such possible criticism by virtue of its refined literary style, the subtlety of its characters and ultimately the credibility of its scenario.The bones of the Titanic story are covered, but unlike the feature film they do not form the very gist of the spectacle. Despite one of the book’s characters having been involved in the ship’s design and construction, here we are spared redundant detail of dimension, quantity and material. This is not a novel about a ship, despite the almost continual sense of visual opulence that pervades the experience. On the contrary, this is a novel about the people on board, or more accurately a particular class, who sailed in her. In Beryl Bainbridge’s novel we are among the upper crust, or at least those who aspire to join them, many decks above the steerage who, just like they do anywhere, populate a level of society that the ‘comfortable’ know to exist but only rarely acknowledge.Thus Every Man For Himself, despite its brevity, successfully addresses the vast minefield of British social class relations. At the start of this voyage, those class relations seem to be rigidly contrasted in lower versus upper decks, in steerage dorms versus plush cabins. And these differences are not merely economic, since identity and assumption are also in play. But when crisis materialises, the price of a passenger’s ticket contributes nothing towards the ability to survive. A vision of new equality arises when, clearly, the planned facilities cannot cope, and never could have doped, since those who conceived the boat could not conceive of its demise.But it is in the book’s metaphorical mode that this short novel transcends and exceeds much of what has been written or shot about the fate of the Titanic. In the same way that the ship’s designers could not conceive of a collision so catastrophic that it might sink an unsinkable vessel, perhaps those who assumed existing class relations were permanent could also not conceive of a war so devastating it would ruin a continent and simply erase convention. It was not just a ship that sank on this voyage, but also the rigid societal divisions that inspired its very design.Of course we already know the plot of Every Man For Himself. Eventually even the book’s scenario makes sense. But the real danger of writing such a novel is that it becomes subservient to those events we already know, destined merely to repeat them. But Beryl Bainbridge is several cuts above this class of writer and the book transcends the familiar to address universal themes simply through its intense study of character. Thus clichés, even the less obvious, are all avoided.
—Philip
