Flashman
by
George MacDonald Fraser

This book is written in the style of an autobiography by an intellectual, to the extent of including a Who's Who style biographical sketch and footnotes. The author takes a minor character from "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and uses him for the main character in a novel about English military history of about 150 years ago.

The hero, actually anti hero, as designed by the author is a gentleman from a titled and wealthy family, but with an apparent character flaw. He seems at first glance to be incapable of moral insight or "knowing right from wrong", as the legal phrase goes. Actually he knows right from wrong as well as anyone, he just doesn't believe in the concept. To him, social life in Victorian England seems to be an exercise in hypocrisy which he isn't inclined to participate in. He is very willing to play the part of a gentleman, he is just not willing to believe in the concept or entertain the notion that he is one.

He is, therefore, refreshingly honest, at least in his description of himself to the reader. Remember, this is ostensibly an autobiography. He is certainly no gentleman, by the definitions that we are accustomed to, as he is at pains to demonstrate over and over.

The drama in the book is based on carefully crafted historical accuracy with the only apparent alteration being to inject Flashman into the episode at the highest levels. He accomplishes this by giving Flashman a gift for languages and impossibly good fortune, usually due to misapprehension by others about what they are seeing when Flashman appears. Flashman always takes advantage of the misapprehension, since it invariably favors him.

Flashman takes pains to demonstrate that, under the proper circumstances he is a liar, cheat, womanizer, thief, and coward. But only in the proper circumstances which are invariably those which have the potential to end his life or career or place in society. In all other circumstances he is as fine a gentleman as anyone else.

This book is wonderful adventure and as good escape literature as one is likely to read, but in addition provides this very profound commentary on the now defunct western notion of a gentleman. Since it is defunct, we won't ever know precisely what it actually amounted to. From Trollope and Dickens one is inclined to conclude that some actually did live up to the standard and many more partly so. Mr. Fraser suggests in Flashman that the standard was never much more than fantasy but one that was accepted and represented as reality by the entire upper class and much of the upper middle class of England and the rest of Western Europe. Also America. But this book casts another light on things, altogether. To the extent of leading us to wonder if we have a very good grasp of the characters of our own revered Founding Fathers.

A thorough analysis of this book should include its place in the feminization of the West. It appeared in the late '60's, so it could not but be influenced by the politics of the times. One suspects that the author must have had some negative experiences at the hands of the gentlemen of the time. In any case, one of the strategies of feminism is to decay the institutions that combine to maintain masculinism as the dominant ideology in the West. Since masculinism invented the gentleman concept and to the extent it was believed in by Western civilization, it tended to maintain in power those that subscribed to it as epitomizing what humanity should aspire to. So, the way to kill this concept is to portray perported gentlemen in an unfavorable light and to suggest that we of the masses are having one put over on us.

Whether intentionally or not, Mr. Fraser has accomplished this in fine fashion. Flashman takes his place along side lesser and greater media creations designed for the same purpose, characters like Rhett Butler and Dagwood Bumstead, or the more recent examples of the anti hero in Catch-22, or John Hersey's The War Lover. Or, The Graduate comes to mind.

Our greatest debt of gratitude to Mr. Fraser, though, will be due to the instruction we receive regarding the nature of illusion. How humans create it, how they impose it on their peers, and, to some extent, what the price is. In the East, they are fond of saying that life is only illusion. In this book we see that that is, indeed the case, though perhaps not in the way we initially take it. In the Bible we are told that all is vanity. So, this book demonstrates that, out of vanity, humans create these illusions and then, through political correctness, impose it on the rest of us. No doubt all of our egos are flattered by these illusions, but, none the less, they are exactly that. Flashman is no cad, he just refuses to accept on the inner level, the illusion. He does, however, use it to advantage. Our lives are dominated by these illusions and life is about, as a result, disillusionment. We have illusions built upon illusions, so that, for the average person, there is little hope of dismantling them all, layer by layer. The lady and gentleman concept is an illusion and we live in a time when it is essential that the illusions be dispensed with. A new creative turn in the life of man cannot occur unless the creators first dispense with the illusions.

So, Mr. Fraser has done his part here. Pornography is an illusion being used to dispense with the illusion of chastity. Democracy is an illusion, purporting to establish equality among men. A greater failure cannot be imagined. Justice is an illusion, as many recent famous trials have demonstrated. Justice is beyond the reach of man. Religion is an illusion, perhaps the greatest of illusions. Heaven and Hell, and the Devil? One should not ask, in what sense religion is an illusion, rather the more important question is, in what sense is religion not an illusion?

Of course, framing these human creations with the negative concept of illusion perhaps does them an injustice, but it is accurate, anyway.

I guess the final accolade I would bestow on Mr. Fraser would be to label this novel as the only case, known by me, of literature coming out of the second half of the twentieth century. That calls, I guess, for a personal definition of literature. Literature, as art, must say something profound about life in such a way as to demonstrate that it couldn't be put any other way. It must demonstrate absolute mastery of the medium. It must also be comprehensible to the consumer, which is, of course, the major flaw in most "modern art". If it isn't, it is merely mental masturbation.