Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)

Tibor Tóth: Fiction as the 'River Between': Daniel Martin

FICTION AS THE 'RIVER BETWEEN': DANIEL MARTIN 69 tioned his concern regarding the inadequate means by which the realist novel is trying to do something that other arts are better equipped to achieve. The artist was absolutely right when he continued by attesting that the novel will continue in this way because readers are not prepared to accept a radically different solution to these problems. Daniel Martin is an excellent illustration of what happens if the very nature of the two arts, that is the cinema and the fictional one are applied mechanically on either of them. It is important to remember that Daniel Martin considers the novel to stand above other forms of representation. He manages to give up scriptwriting by the end of the novel in an attempt to 'get home,' that is to find his peace and harmony, or at least what is left of it. The novel employs the means of cinematic representation, such as flashbacks, intercutting, close-ups, which are actually inadequate as means of fictional representation in order to create the sense of displacement characteristic of the novel. The structure of the novel is rendered similarly chaotic by a constant change of narrators, tenses, points of view. Yet it is possible to detect behind the parade of alien technical solutions which seem to govern the problematical structure of the novel the development of Daniel Martin's life-story from his teenage period to adulthood. Daniel is a lonely character in the opening chapter of the novel and his alienation from the people slaughtering the rabbits and scared to death by the German bombers is clear from the very beginning of his life story. We are tempted to say that middle aged Daniel Martin is trying to tell us his interpretation of what he really was and is with the intention to find out what he can be, but this very smooth formula is contradicted by the organising principle at work. We have already mentioned that Daniel Martin understands the artificial quality of his 'existence' and he compares it to the artificiality of the only medium he seems to be 'at home' in, which is film. Because he employs the technique of film, the different perspectives remain isolated, and they cannot cohere a narrative deficiency which is employed to express the kind of 'technical exile' as opposed to the '(human) spiritual exile' experienced by the protagonist. The novel thus 'cuts' the roots of art, which feed on life and the most visible dimension of 'rootlessness' is linked to traditional elements of fiction like setting, time and narrative point of view. If we take, for example, time it is quite easy to demonstrate that life and art are in