'All Change, Humanity!'

 

Claude Houghton was an English novelist, playwright, and poet whose work, whilst being praised by his contemporary authors - J.B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, Graham Greene, and, most notably, Henry Miller, never ignited sufficient momentum with the public to survive the passage of time (though the excellent Valancourt Books https://www.valancourtbooks.com/ have brought five of his works back into print).

Reading his novel 'All Change, Humanity!', published in 1942, I began to see why. 

In the earlier novels, the ones republished by Valancourt, his deepest interests are there but offered obliquely. You see his philosophical playfulness, his interest in questions of identity and of the unity and, more often, fragmentation of the self, the ways in which our perception of any person is molded by our needs so differently and culminating at hinting at a prospective transformation of a person that yields a whole new perspective, a renewing Eden.

In this, later novel, written under the urgency of war, the obliqueness gives way to a straightforward confrontation. The world as presently constructed is given over to fear and out of that fear the wish for control - the mechanization of our public world, the transactional nature of our private world - is leading us to collapse. There is an alternative - a spiritual transformation - to which we are invited but do we allow ourselves to be transformed? It is a fundamental change of attitude that is asked of us rooted in an acceptance of the present, presence that frees us from the knottiness of our pasts and allows us to be wholly present to what presents itself (You can sense Houghton's close reading of Blake, Boehme, and Swedenborg here). 

Indeed you can feel that Swedenborg's question of what do you most deeply desire (and that will reveal your ongoing reality to you) is the principal driver of the text. 

This being so, you can sense how he might alienate his audience because in the course of the plot the safe havens of family, tradition, money, social order, being sensible (indeed 'sane') even valuing your memories are stripped away and you are left with the enigmatic Christopher Bell, who both dominates the book and is rarely present, and who is a challenging image of transformation, a renewed humanity, deeply transgressive of Houghton's (and our) safe, social constructs of what is expected. 

All of this is wrapped within a conventional, dramatic narrative which, with all the infelicities of its time and place, is hugely enjoyable, gifted with a cast of characters that engage and intrigue, and turn the pages along. Yet it continually confronts the reader with the notion that the society in which they are living, even at this moment are fighting for, is in, in fact, on the edge of collapse; and, the only alternative is to change into the renewing humanity that Bell represents.

This, in truth, makes the narrative ever more timely since 'the machine' has continued to advance, and the time grows late - many of Houghton's sentences could be easily transposed into a time of climate chaos - yet we continue to resist (consciously and unconsciously) the change necessary.

There is a wonderful moment when the two intertwined and decaying families that offer images of life as normal are suddenly exposed to the fact that the lawyer responsible for their affairs is a fraud (and has committed suicide) and yet, even now, they cannot let go of the hope that all is well and continuity will be assured. 

Read against the background of COP27, you cannot help thinking that this is where we are - all the evidence is against our present styles of life but we will cling to them, even if it means our ruin.

And what is necessary for change? Houghton is set against the notion that you can argue people into it (or indeed offer a 'religious' program for it) but you can 'infect' people, exemplify its reality, and change will happen. You can neither refute the song of sixpence nor the saint, wrote, Yeats, you can simply allow yourself to be reorientated in their presence. We need Houghton imagines more exemplars who have stepped into the presence of the ever-present truth that gifts wholeness, we need more 'saints'.