Human Traces

I was awake until 3.30 am then restless after finishing a first read of Sebastian Faulk’s novel ‘Human Traces.’ A first read because, as is usual for me, I was impatient to follow the characters to the end of his narrative so some of the more didactic passages just had to be skipped over to be returned to and absorbed later.

Reading this so soon after ‘Freedom’ has left me with the possibly unfair image of the Franzen novel as a cartoon - in the earlier sense of that word , a sketch for a piece that will one day be fleshed in. The insights and occasionally memorable passages hang on the outline like areas given more attention than the rest. I read somewhere that Franzen, after a long ‘dry’ spell reworked the beginnings of something he had thrown aside, a couple of chapters about Patty. That possibly explains why she is so unevenly drawn, detailed at first then blurry, her motivations confused rather than explained by subsequent events.

Probably ‘Human Traces’ can only really be relished by people who are interested in the history of psychiatry and the quest for understanding of the human mind. But then aren’t all humans, if they are able to rise just a little above the fight for mere survival, fascinated by the how’s and why’s of our mental states? The first clumsy forays into attempting to locate the seat of the mind (and even the soul) by cutting into the organs of the dead look foolish now but the intensity of the desire to find clues can’t be derided. The two men, Thomas and Jacques, who are the main characters in this almost 800 page opus go through moments of despair as they realise how little they will be able to learn in their lifetimes and how far science has to go before the secrets of consciousness can be uncovered.

The passage of time, from the 1870’s to just after the tragic madness of the 1st World War, in fact saw huge strides made in scientific method, more sophisticated equipment was developed, microscopes improved and people were able to gaze deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the universe in microcosm. In the final chapters words like ‘chromosomes’ appear. But Thomas and Jacques, good men who sought to ease human suffering as much they desired to find the secrets of life, were to die sadly knowing they had come hardly a step closer to helping the poor lunatics who had inspired their work. Only, as Thomas hopes somewhere early on in his career, their explorations had perhaps made people more kindly toward the sufferers of derangement.

The women who circle around these two men, their wives, lovers, patients, children, are as clearly drawn as themselves and their normal lives, lived in the shadow of the madhouse (a smart clinic and sanatorium in the Austrian Alps but nonetheless an acknowledged madhouse) , are a vivid backdrop to the task the men have set themselves, the ‘normal’ life the mad are denied.

I’m awed by Faulks. Now he IS a real master of his craft.