Author: Helen Fielding
Year: 1998 (1996)
Publisher: Egmont Richter AB
Language: Swedish (translator Carla Wiberg)
Within the
rich treasure trove of Polish cinema, there exists one movie* that has reached
cult status in Poland yet is little known beyond its borders, owing most
probably to the language barrier. Its hapless hero is a gentleman of
forty-nine, a scholar of linguistics whose exquisite sensitivity would, in our
present age of classifications, doubtless be catalogued under the autism spectrum.
Change is to him unbearable, grammar a battlefield he is prepared to die on, interaction
with others an infernal struggle, and the world as a whole a chaotic
performance to which he seems to have tragically misplaced the script.
The Polish public,
whose sense of humour I flatter myself to understand, has seen fit to classify
this movie as a comedy, and indeed it was under that cheerful pretext that I
was persuaded to watch it some years ago. To me, however, it was a dark
manifestation of a deeply troubled person’s hysterical attempts to stay afloat
in a social environment that he perceives as intrusive, incomprehensible, and
intolerably cruel. Where others discovered wit, I saw only torment. The
protagonist’s suffering was so absolute, so relentless, that it banished comedy
much like thunderclouds banish the sun.
My
encounter with Helen Fielding’s widely acclaimed novel “Bridget Jones dagbok” (“Bridget
Jones’s Diary”) summoned a very similar sensation. Although, according to the
book cover, Nick Hornby touted it as the product of “a comedy genius,” and
Salman Rushdie assured us it was of such brilliance that “even men will laugh”,
I found myself reading not with amusement but with a lump of lead lodged in the
pit of my being.
This novel follows
the form of the private diary of Bridget Jones, a single, professional woman in
her thirties, navigating the perils of her London existence. She struggles with
extremely low self-esteem, unhealthy body ideals, elevated consumption of
nicotine and alcohol, and a destructive attitude to relationships with her
family, but first and foremost, with men. The diary itself is sometimes
confessional, sometimes incoherent, mostly emotional. She writes when drunk,
she scribbles when under stress, and occasionally her notes are inexplicably
absent altogether.
Bridget’s
angst bleeds through every page, and even the misunderstandings, antics, and pitfalls,
that most promise comic relief are blackened by Bridget’s palpable misery and obvious
need for urgent help. One begins to wonder, not about Bridget, who is after all
a fictional character, but about the curious cruelty of those who find
amusement in her despair. To laugh at such anguish, however prettily disguised
as comedy, seems less a tribute to wit than an indictment of empathy. As for
me, the laughs were few and far between.
As a piece
of literature, “Bridget Jones dagbok” also has some notable shortcomings. Born
as a newspaper serial in The Independent before assuming the costume of a novel
in 1996, it still bears the marks of its episodic parentage. One suspects that
Bridget herself was created to critique the hysterical hunt for social conformity
that many women in London seem to experience. Bridget is pressured to desperately
chase careers, collect lovers, and amass party invitations, all the while
betraying her own natural lazy self. This critique, if indeed it was at all
intended, might have gleamed with sharper irony, had Fielding bestowed upon Bridget
some genuine passion incompatible in its absurdity or even nobility with society’s
demands.
And so, all
things considered, the novel is not particularly well-written. The diary form,
though not in itself problematic, demands a rigour of execution that Fielding
too often falls short of. In the hands of a master, such intimacy can strike
with devastating force as titles such as “The Color Purple” (see my review of
April 2020) or “Doctor Glas” (see my review of August 2023) testify to, but
here the illusion falters. Whether from the remnants of its serial inception, the
imperfections of translation, or the author’s ineptitude, the pact with the
reader is repeatedly broken. A drunk woman may well stumble in speech, but she
does not misspell her diary to mimic her slurred diction. Long conversational
meanderings are rarely transcribed in full, in particular if the writer is trying
to make a completely unrelated point. And when the dinner collapses into the
drain, and one is scrambling to rescue whatever can still be salvaged, one does
not pause mid-calamity to jot it down.
I
understand that these inconsistencies were committed in the name of comedy, yet
they betray the cruel truth that the epistolary novel is a treacherous form,
mastered by few and mishandled by many. Indeed, I hazard the heresy that this
is one of those rare occasions when the movie, at least in the sense of a
comedy, eclipses the book.
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