MAN BOOKER PRIZE 1970
Booker Club: The Elected Member
Looking back at the Booker: Bernice Rubens
Though it's clearly marked out as a book from a different age, there remain plenty of reasons to read 1970's winner
Sam Jordison
Wed 12 Dec 2007
This 1970 Booker winner is prefaced by a short quote: "If patients are disturbed, their families are often very disturbing." The sentiment might not be all that far from Philip Larkin's "They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad", but the fact that it is taken from RD Laing's The Politics Of Experience is something of an eyebrow raiser. How many contemporary novelists, I wonder, would kick off with a reference to the controversial anti-psychiatrist, let alone, as Bernice Rubens did, use his ideas as a springboard for an entire novel?
Fortunately, while the reference may date The Elected Member, it doesn't prevent it from resonating today. Those cynical about Laing's theories will be pleased to learn that Rubens is not bound by them. Norman Zweck, for instance, the lead character, is clearly and quite traditionally mad - suffering extreme amphetamine psychosis and desperately in need of a spell in a psychiatric institution to straighten out.
The descriptions of Zweck's attempts to rid himself and his surroundings of the silverfish that he's convinced are everywhere are vivid and painful, a testament to Rubens' ability to get inside the head of her protagonist and show his suffering as well as his unhinged state. Explorations of the effects of Zweck's condition on his immediate family are equally unsettling. The toxic combination of anger, guilt and impotence experienced by Norman's ageing and ailing father Rabbi Zweck, and his two sisters (one a middle-aged spinster still wearing the rolled white socks of her childhood, one cast out of the Jewish family circle for marrying a goy) is set down with unflinching realism, the author once again giving us the impression of direct and unfiltered access to the troubled minds of her cast.
According to Rubens' obituary in the Daily Telegraph, she once wrote that: "The acid test of a good piece of writing, even if it is of violence and cruelty, is that it must make one's ears water." I don't know if the "ears" reference is a typographical error, or Rubens really did expect quality writing to induce this bizarre effect, but her intended meaning is clear enough. On her own terms then, The Elected Member is a success. It's hard reading, but all the more resonant for that. Like Something To Answer For before it, this book makes more recent Booker winners appear comparatively timid and conservative choices.
That's not to say, however, that The Elected Member is without easier pleasures. There's plenty of wry humour, for instance, relating to the absurdities to which Norman is driven and the sharp-tempered rudeness that accompanies his condition. You probably have to be immersed in Rabbi Zweck's anxious wait for his doctor, Levy, to ring at his door to appreciate the hilarity of Norman's overloud response: "If that's that shit Levy, tell him to piss off." Trust me, however, it and similar moments are ear-wateringly funny.
There's also the simple appeal of sustained, quality writing. Effective in the accumulation rather than for any one passage, something of its attraction can still be seen in the following observation following on from the tidying of a bed after a patient (Billy) has been taken, literally kicking and screaming from Norman's ward: "The whole bed looked discharged from service, as it might have looked if Billy had just died, and Norman was frightened at the speed with which all traces of a man could be removed."
Finally, the depiction of the old Jewish East End, and a way of life that Rubens emphasises was already disappearing as she wrote the book is fascinating in social history. The Elected Member maintains a relevance outside its own era, but it's an interesting curiosity, nevertheless, and not just as an early Booker winner.
There are flaws. The steadily and expertly built tension of Norman and his family's struggle diffuses into a melodramatic and rather silly conclusion. Also, a back story, pinning a large amount of the blame for Norman's trouble (pace Laing) onto a stereotypically domineering Jewish mother and sexual-orientation issues doesn't convince as completely as the action that takes place in the present.
So, The Elected Member is a worthy winner and a brave choice for the Booker prize, but not a masterpiece. It's probably best summed up by the author herself, and her typically terse assessment of her own writing: "Better than most, not as good as some."
Man Booker Prize
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