RIVER NOVEL & COMPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES ADAM IRVING PhD 2016

347 Pages·2016·7.25 MB·English

RIVER NOVEL &
COMPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES

ADAM IRVING

PhD 2016
RIVER NOVEL &
COMPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES

ADAM IRVING

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements of
the Manchester Metropolitan University
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Contemporary Arts
the Manchester Metropolitan
University. Cheshire 2016

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ABSTRACT

The complementary discourse explores the function and value of narrative and
why mankind seems to have always seen events, connected or unconnected, as
stories. It investigates how we process and perceive fiction and compares narratives
found in non-fiction, police witness statements, films and diaries to consider why the
human brain seems hard-wired to transform events into narrative.
The accompanying novel, A River, is set in Manchester over a three hundred
year period. The events in the chapters are presented in reverse order; from the
1990’s to the 1720’s, beginning with the chronological end of the tale and working
towards the starting point. The chapter’s regression highlights how a familiar location
is constantly in flux and sometimes shares little with the same place of the past.
Time and location are both treated as characters, playing important roles in the
personality of the city. The buildings and streets, events, food and language have all
been researched for accuracy, either first hand or using diaries, films, maps and
photographs. The novel occupies a grey area between fiction and history.
The narrative actively avoids the traditional novel formulas of historical fiction
and magic realism and is intended to be an accessible experimental novel,
questioning the idea of what a story is.

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A River: Novel

When the ice began to melt, the water searched for the easiest route to take. It
flooded, engulfed and found its way lower and lower as if starving and in search of
food. Then there was a river. A deep and powerful torrent of cold water, which carved
its way ahead.
The river ran before there was anything for it to run through. It gushed under,
over and through untamed land, trees, plants and debris until it joined another river,
crashing into a steep rocky place where the two met.
The area swarmed with life, through decade after decade after decade and the
living things gave little regard to the passing of time. Small groups of families arrived,
who cleared and worked the land, the best they knew how. They made fields, stone
walls, wooden bridges, timber homes and created ponds by channelling the river. The
river was too powerful to be moved though. The dwellers had arrived onto its territory
and had to live with its ways.
The people brought horses and cattle, ducks and chickens. They gouged
muddy pathways where they walked, over and over again. They built stronger,
sturdier houses out of stone and daub from the nearby lake and their nameless tracks
spiderwebbed out further and further as more feet travelled them.
People liked to name things, so the dirt tracks between the crofts were given
names, the fields and ponds were given names and suddenly, people owned the
names, owned the land around the river. They rented it, leased it, bought and sold
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leaves of paper, which proved they owned stretches and sections of it; divided the old
pieces and renamed the new pieces. Wells were dug, springs were found, churches
were built, windmills erected, people were born and buried, footsteps from the place
where they had lived. And the place, which wasn’t a place before, now was. And a
river ran through it.
The clusters of houses became a community, a location, a hamlet, villages and
then a town. The people were much the same as people everywhere, they drank and
fought and laughed. The wildlife pulsated and overflowed so much that even a blind
hunter wouldn’t have gone hungry. There were trout and eels in the river, boar in the
forest, otters, weasels, storks and heron. And this place, was Manchester. And a river
ran through it.

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I

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Dear Baby, I’ll have to call you that as you don’t yet have a
name. I would like to tell you how lucky you are to be alive. I
have to tell you lots of things, about how you came to be born,
and why you will live. I know this is a doomed plan to begin
with though. By the time you are old enough to understand and
appreciate what I have to say, I will have long since left this
world. Thinking ahead has been part of my life for so long now,
but I have not yet solved the problem of how I can get these
sentiments to reach you in twenty years’ time, when you will be
more inclined to understand the implication of their contents.
I would like more than anything, for you to see how important
some of the things I have to say are. I understand, perhaps
better than anybody, that our actions and what we promise have

enormous effects on our families, and I want you to be aware of
that too. The things you might say flippantly always have
consequences and an aftermath.
On the day you were born, your father, Keith Serrah had
taken the train from Rochdale to Manchester. I was in the same
carriage as him, three or four seats away and when he got off,
I was following a small distance behind. He looked white and
sickly that day. He stopped every few hundred yards to catch
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his breath. This was most fortunate for me however, as I had
reached an age where my body no longer kept up with the pace of
my mind or of other people. Walking had become strenuous a long
time ago and it had been decades since I could muster the
energy to run.
I must tell you before I continue, that your father didn’t
know me, but I knew him. Perhaps better than anyone. It’s
highly unusual that I should be writing to you, whom I don’t
know, about your father, who never knew me and who nearly never
knew you too. Everything about my life is unusual. To me,
normality itself is an unusual thing.
That day, I could see the look on his face, I saw it on
the train. I’m sure that he wasn’t thinking, as he should have
been, of your impending birth. He didn’t seem to be
contemplating marriage or your mother either. I’d seen the
nervous look on his face before to know what he was thinking.

*

Keith Serrah was slouching on an aisle seat, nursing a visibly bad hangover. He was
pale, sweaty and nervously looking out for the ticket inspector, who was making his
way towards him with the casual glee an inspector has when they know they are
about to ask for a ticket which does not exist. As the inspector sauntered over, he
was suddenly distracted by another passenger in the next carriage. He looked at
Keith, lifted a finger in the air and told him he’d be right back. Twenty seconds later
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the train pulled into the dilapidated splendour of Manchester Victoria station and Keith
made a swift exit, walking away but stopping every few seconds to breathe the cold
air and mop his brow.
1994 had been a bad year for him, but this year would be different he told
himself. ‘Everything will be fine’, he said out loud. He headed for the exit and walked
along Todd Street and sat on the steps of a closed shop. He put his right hand in his
jacket pocket and produced a wad of money. He flicked at the edges of the notes,
held together with an elastic band. For a few minutes he’d experienced clarity, but
now, he felt that events were being swept downstream faster than he could keep up
with. He sighed.
His gaze wandered from the money to the discarded chips on the pavement in
front of him, then to the gravel car park opposite, the cars crawling down Fennel
Street, above the buildings and to the tip of the cathedral peeking out over the roofs.
Only then was he was reminded of the purpose of the money. What it was supposed
to be for.
Supposed to be for. The words echoing round his head. There was still plenty
of time for it to be taken to its rightful place. Keith stood up, but didn’t start walking.
He felt still felt nauseous and peered through the window of a jeweller’s. Shutters
down and all valuables removed from the display, there was nothing to look at except
price tags. He was thinking ahead. Far ahead. Thinking that, if, by some chance he
didn’t pay the caterer, then Kelly would be furious and no doubt call their wedding off.
The jeweller’s large hand-painted sign announced they paid good prices for gold.
Why would he need a wedding ring if he wasn’t getting married?
“Change?” said a feeble voice at his feet.
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He looked down at a bundle of sleeping bags and stolen hospital blankets and
spotted the top of the homeless man’s head.
Change. He wondered if he could change. He ignored both questions.
“Happy New Year then, ar’kid,” the voice said burrowing further into the dirty
blankets.
He was thinking of other things that could happen in the next few hours,
dreamily imagining the sweet clatter of casino chips, the comforting rhythm of cards
being shuffled. He was inhaling the plumes of cigarette smoke which would drift in
front of him and tickle the back of his throat as he sat looking over at the warm glow
of the cashing-in window. Not that he ever frequented that side of the casino. The
usual pattern was that he doubled his money, lost a little, lost a little more, until he
was back to where he started and then, in an attempt to double it again, would lose it
all. It was the trap that lured him and every gambler in the building. Hope. The hope
of winning. No matter how futile things got, it was always theoretically possible to win
it back. And if he lost everything, he told himself he wasn’t really to blame, luck was
just against him.
He was at his most pathetic upon leaving the casino. As he collected his coat
from reception, he would always give the staff a wide fake smile, intended to signify
that he hadn’t lost any money. As he reached out for his coat, he would mime the
action of dropping a coin in the tip bowl, flicking the coins already there with one of
his fingers to create the impression a coin had landed.
He quickly forgot about this as he waited for an empty, faded, orange 135 bus
to go past. He watched it thoughtlessly and then crossed the road making his way
over the virtually empty car park towards the Corn Exchange. He tried to recall the
real reason he had come to Manchester and dismiss the fantastical musings of his
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