DH: Having just read through Benjamin Wood’s interview on his debut novel, The Bellwether Revivals, I find that I like this gracious writer, if possible, even more than I already do. I was fascinated to discover that Benjamin spent his early years growing up in the nursing home that his parents owned like the one depicted in his book. I hope that this summer you’ll read The Bellwether Revivals. It’s always a special pleasure to read debut fiction. But when it’s as good as this, it’s an extraordinary delight.
DH: Benjamin, you’ve written a realist novel with a distinctive twist. There’s a transgressive character in the plot who thinks that the ordinary practical limitations of life don’t apply to him. He has an extraordinary name too, Eden Bellwether. Even from childhood Eden seems to take on a dominant role, especially for example, with his younger sister Iris.
But Eden’s environment is so privileged anyway, he’s part of a social and intellectual elite. I wonder if you assign a role to that background in making Eden so disruptive of reality? His personal sense of being privileged seems to mesh so well with his social sense of being privileged that it’s hard to separate the pathology from what passes for his social norm anyway. Does Eden’s exceptional social background act as a mask for his personal psychopathology, making it seem normal?
BW: Hi, Dennis. First of all, I want to thank you for reading the book so thoroughly and sensitively, and for inviting me to discuss it with you and the 3G1B readers. I think you raise an interesting point here. In my mind, Eden is a character whose perceptions of the ‘real world’ are distorted. He is so effortlessly talented as a musician, so capable as a student, that he cannot comprehend the hard work others have to put into mastering their instrument or studying a text. He has also been enveloped in a privileged, private world all of his life—from prep school, to boarding school, to Cambridge—which has insulated him from the ordinary struggles of most people. In writing the book, I wanted to explore what that kind of commitment to musicianship and scholarship might do to a person, what effect it might have on him and his family and friends. I’m not sure that there is necessarily a link between Eden’s life of privilege and his skewed psychology, but he’s certainly acquired an exaggerated sense of his own ‘specialness’ from somewhere. I think it’s more a symptom of his upbringing than his social standing, though.
DH: The mystique of Cambridge plays an important role in The Bellwether Revivals. The inbred social clique of students, Eden’s circle, has as its background the wider glamor of the Cambridge student body, the university facilities with their social whirl of cultural and intellectual activities.
Benjamin, what do you think of Cambridge? Is your attitude one of unalloyed affection? Are there particular reasons that the place interests you? Do you have any qualified feelings about the university?
BW: My perspective on Cambridge is fairly aligned with Oscar’s, the protagonist. Like him, I did not attend the university, but I lived in Cambridge for three years, which was about how long it took to write the novel. Walking around the place, it is difficult to ignore the monuments to history that surround you. It is a greatly inspiring environment for someone who values the importance of learning, as I do, but it is also an overwhelming place for someone who is not an invited member of that world—the colleges are mostly walled off and unavailable to non-members, and there’s a feeling that you’ll somehow never be completely connected with it, as much as you peer in from the outside. At the same time, when people come in from out of town, you feel a strange sense of ownership, and you’re proud to show them around and say, There’s King’s College Chapel, built in the time of Henry VI or That’s Peterhouse, founded in the 13th Century. I have mixed feelings about Cambridge, and I remain uneasy about its elitist traditions, but I hugely enjoyed my time living in the city, because I made lasting friendships with postgraduate students and postdocs and alumni of the colleges in those three years. It was going to hear the chapel choirs at King’s and Trinity that sparked the idea for The Bellwether Revivals, so the place will always be important to me. If the city had its own jersey number, it would be retired into the annals my mind. That’s how sentimental I am for the place.
DH: Oscar is the 20-something nursing assistant who works at a care facility not far from the Cambridge. His interest in the personal library of Doctor Paulsen, the elderly patient who is his friend, is an indication that Oscar has a potential that’s not being tapped by his limited job and his work/sleep, work/sleep living pattern.
Oscar is taken up by the set of Cambridge students led by the Bellwether siblings. Most people would feel awkward if they were inserted, as Oscar is, into this atmosphere of wealth and educational privilege from the outside. Oscar is of course drawn in by his attraction to Iris Bellwether.
But Oscar is mostly unflappable. I’m thinking of how well he performs when he visits the imposing Bellwether estate for the first time and meets the parents of his friends. His diffidence to social class and conventional establishment values always seems to rise to the occasion.
What do you think of Oscar? If he were a real person and not a fictional character, could you imagine him as a friend of yours?
BW: I would like to think so, yes. He’d be welcome to my house for dinner any time. I hope that he comes across as a compassionate and thoughtful person. There is nothing macho about him; he’s a sensitive sort, and fairly reticent to voice his opinions. But he is always trying to do the right thing—to not act in his own self-interest, which is, of course, what Eden and Iris tend to lean towards as motivation. He has made tough decisions in his life, choosing not to go to university, though he was more than intelligent enough, but to forge his own path, to get away from the ‘unexamined life’ of his parents and their housing estate. I think of him as a brave soul, actually. And what redeems him in the book is not his acceptance into the Bellwethers’ world of wealth, nor the privilege of an expensive education, but the realisation he comes to about his own capabilities. I hope someone like that would be everyone’s friend.
DH: Is there something wrong with the self-esteem that Eden and his circle feel? It would be easy to conclude that Eden has crossed the line into an unbridled narcissism. But I also find Eden charming. And the reader is unsure, through most of the book, whether or not Eden’s self-confidence is justified. What makes Eden so appealing to his set and even to the reader? It’s almost as if his pathology makes him more likeable. But perhaps you don’t like him at all. What do you feel about Eden? Have you ever known anyone like him?
BW: I have never known anyone quite as manipulative as Eden, no, but I have certainly met people as eccentric and single-minded. I’ve always been drawn to unconventional people, particularly doddering academic sorts who can recite Milton but couldn’t tell you the price of milk or who starred in Top Gun. Part of my intention was for Eden to be a curious and likeable character from the outset. I felt he needed to be charming, charismatic, and mysterious enough for the reader to connect with, so that, by the time his personality begins to darken, the reader feels both compelled and repelled by him. I hope I managed to achieve something of that.
DH: Doctor Paulsen is Oscar’s elderly friend at the nursing home. And the social scientist Herbert Crest is Paulsen’s longtime friend and sometime lover. There a nice parallelism in Bellwether between the brilliant young people around Eden, so full of promise and plans for the future and the declining seniors who, realistically, face bleak prospects as their health fails.
And I’m mindful of the word Revivals in the title of your novel. There’s an attempt by Eden to revive Herbert. It’s applied with Eden’s dazzling confidence that he can restore the old man not only physically but even spiritually.
But the idea that youth can redeem age, which Eden certainly feels, is a chimera, yes? Do you mean to dispel that idea as nonsense? Doctor Paulsen wants to cure the human race of its hope which he regards as pernicious. Are you on the fence on the question of whether youth can redeem age? Or a realist who sees ascendant youth as inevitably plowing the oldsters under?
BW: Phew! I wish I knew how to answer that, Dennis. Let me try… Having spent a few years of my childhood growing up in a nursing home, I wanted to reflect the pleasure that can be derived from the company of the elderly. Not to sound all Benjamin Button about it, but there’s a line in the novel where Oscar says that the residents at Cedarbrook are “a cast of relatives he was grateful to have adopted.” That’s how I felt growing up in the nursing home my parents owned (in a village in Lancashire, England). I remember those years very fondly—not just because it seemed as if I had an extended family, an extra twenty-odd grandparents living in my house, but because I had a sense that my brother and I (we were 6 and 8 years old at the time) brought some joy to the lives of the residents in return. They would often ask to be wheeled out into the garden to watch us play football; they’d save a few pounds from their pension every week to give us pocket money. And they would sit there in the bright sunshine with the broadest smiles on their faces and a teary glaze about their eyes. So, do I feel that youth can redeem age? Not exactly. But I think that the remembrance of things past, as Proust might put it, can be strengthening and restorative, just as a sad piece of music can inspire and uplift the spirits.
DH: My last question, Benjamin…and thanks very much for The Bellwether Revivals. One of the features of your story that I admire is that you don’t tell us everything. The documents are sealed. We never learn the import of the final conversations between Eden Bellwether and Herbert Crest and the extraordinary contest of wills that those last conversations must have represented.
I have a conceit that since you’re the writer, you somehow know what was said between your characters but, as the storyteller, you have decided not to tell us. But maybe you are wondering too. It seems to me that you pull back from a definitive viewpoint at the very end of your story.
I can’t bury the hope that Eden tries to represent and I’m reluctant to bury Eden. Is that just my problem? Am I still fighting for an illusion of hope that you have tried as a writer to dispel?
BW: I’m glad you’ve picked up on this, Dennis. My intention was for the reader to be left with questions about Eden’s abilities at the conclusion of the novel, but to have made their minds up about his character. The book is an exploration of faith and doubt, and I hope that the reader follows the characters throughout their fluctuations towards one state and the other. Ultimately, what is important to me is what the reader concludes. The book isn’t meant to be didactic. I wanted to present, as you so eloquently put it, a realist story, but one in which the hardened rationalism of the world is called into question. How much you believe—or want to believe—in Eden is the hinge of the book. You’re right to say that, as the writer, I have an idea about the hidden aspects of the story—and, infuriatingly, I aim to hold onto those secrets until I’m drunk enough to reveal them. Thanks again for reading, Dennis. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
