Good Read: "Hearing Voices" and "A Watch In The Night": the final volumes of A. N. Wilson's Lampitt Chronicles

Hearing Voices by A. N. Wilson is the fourth volume of The Lampitt Chronicles, and was published some time after the third volume in the series. It seems as if we might have all expected a trilogy in the ensuing four years between the publication of Daughters of Albion (vol. III) and Hearing Voices. But such was not the case. The series would last another two volumes and end (or so it seems) as a pentalogy.

The novel picks up in the mid-60s with a death, possibly a murder, which closely echoes the death of James Petworth Lampitt, literary scion of the Lampitt clan. The action jumps from the present back to this era, and to Julian Ramsay’s run on Broadway in a one man show depicting the life of Petworth Lampitt. There is a hazy, 70s feel about the narrative. And Julian spends no small amount of time in either a psychotic or chemically altered state. Like the decade itself, Julian is a bit hazy on chronology and details, but the thrust of the narrative brings him closer to the truth about the substance of the Lampitt papers, the truth about Petworth Lampitt, and the truth about Julian’s nemesis Raphael Hunter.

“We are all hearing voices -- when we wake and dream, but only the artist makes hearing voices his way of life.” (119) So Julian attempts to wrestle with the voices that haunt his own life: those of his family and friends, particularly the Lampitts, and those of his artistic guiding lights, William Blake and Shakespeare.

Hearing Voices also looks at Vatican II and in particular its ruling on birth control. Ramsay becomes involved and enamored with a family deeply involved in the decision, and deeply desirous for a child. There’s a satisfying theological debate in this volume between Catholicism and Protestantism. The novel makes the case for the attraction of modern peoples to the deep mystery and spirituality of (Roman) Catholicism while it outlines the attractions of rational Protestantism as well.

By the time the final volume of the pentalogy A Watch In The Night opens, Julian is an old man. He is settled in the cottage that he has inherited from Aunt Deirdre. A Shakespeare presentation on television leads him into reminiscences of his later career as a Shakespearian actor and playwright. Another Lampitt relative figures largely as Julian comes to reside for a time in a former Lampitt seaside manor turned theatrical venue.

The thrust of the final volumes is about the discovery of the truth regarding a few of the characters. Campbell Dilkes, the former owner of the seaside manor, turns out to have been a fascist, and a young protégé of Julian’s is about to reveal this damaging fact in a biography -- much as Raphael Hunter had done with James Petworth Lampitt’s homosexuality in his biography. At the end of the novels, a demimonde of gay characters is revealed. One in particular, Raphael Hunter, has been Julian’s frequent cuckolder.

This gay subplot seems to serve as a metaphor for the inability to know those around you, the personal depths that we all carry within us. The novels do a very good job of weaving into the narrative the gay theme or subtheme. It’s never overplayed, nor parodied. And in the end, we see how what was true was always apparent just below the surface of everyday life. We’re reminded that our own denial, biases, self-involvement, tragedies and triumphs blind us to the truth of those who are closest to us.

A. N. Wilson, who is straight, and whose protagonist in these works is also straight, handles gay characters and gay issues deftly. Never pandering or parodying, giving us, in the end a satisfying account of homosexuality in the era without having written ‘gay’ novels so to speak. The only other novelist I can think of to compare is Michael Chabon.

I loved The Lampitt Chronicles. They were great reads, and I went quickly from the conclusion of one volume to the beginning of the next. They have a reputation for being a lesser A Dance to the Music of Time, Michael Powell’s twelve novel series. I’m reading ADTTMOT now and can say that Wilson’s Lampitt novels are very comparable in some ways, and surpass Powell’s novels in others. ADTTMOT is essentially plotless, without a narrative arc or destination, so to speak. The Lampitt Chronicles uses the truth about Petworth Lampitt’s life and works as its plot goal, but not in an overbearing way. Wilson’s achievement seems to be that he has been able to chronicle the age much the way that Powell does, but in a more artful, perhaps traditional, more skillful way. His achievement will never rivals Powell’s in terms of literary accomplishment. But it should rival it and surpass it in a few respects if one looks closely.