Become Ocean : Ben Smith's "Doggerland"

Become Ocean

Ben Smith's "Doggerland"

Doggerland is the name given in the 1990s to an area of land, now submerged beneath the North Sea, which connected Great Britain to Continental Europe.  Doggerland once extended to modern-day Denmark and far north to the Faroe Islands.  It was a grassland roamed by mammoth, lion, red deer – and their human hunters – but melting ice turned it into an area of marshes and wetlands before it was finally and definitively claimed by the waves around 8,000 years ago. (Incidentally, Doggerland was recently in the news following exciting archaeological discoveries).

The idea of a submerged world resonates with mythical and poetic associations and, as a result, “Doggerland” lends itself well as the title of Ben Smith’s debut novel.   The work, in fact, portrays an unspecified but seemingly not-so-distant future, where global warming and rising sea levels (possibly exacerbated by some other cataclysm) have eroded the coastline and brought to an end civilisation as we know it.  

This strange, new world is made stranger still by the purposely constrained stage against which the narrative plays out.  Smith focuses on two main characters, maintenance men on an enormous wind farm out in the North Sea, who lead a solitary existence on a decrepit rig amongst the rusting turbines.  Although we are given their names, they are generally referred to in the novel as “the Boy” and “the Old Man”.  Early on in the book, we are told that of course, the boy was not really a boy, any more than the old man was all that old; but the names are relative, and out of the grey, some kind of distinction was necessary. It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette.  The men’s life is marked by a sense of claustrophobia, the burden of an inescapable fate.  The monotony of the routine is only broken by occasional visits of the Supply Boat and its talkative “Pilot”, who is the only link with what remains of the ‘mainland’.  The struggle to keep the turbines working with limited resources becomes an image of the losing battle against the rising oceans, at once awesome and terrible in their vastness.  The Romantic notion of the Sublime is given an environmentalist twist.  One can smell the rust and smell the sea-salt.

Whilst the reader is made to share the ennui of the Boy and his mentor, Smith turns his story into a gripping one by making the most of the scant plot elements. For instance, we are told that the Boy was sent on the rig to replace his father, after the latter’s unsuccessful escape attempt.  What exactly happened remains unclear but, together with the Boy, we glean some disturbing details along the way – in this regard, Smith takes a page out of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction, and suggests that society has been taken over by some sort of totalitarian regime of whom the Boy’s father was, presumably, a victim.     Part of the pleasure in reading this novel comes from trying to piece together an understanding of what exactly is happening on the mainland, considering that the perspective given to us is that of two people stranded in the middle of nowhere.

At times, Doggerland reminded me of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, which also describes a future marked by rising water levels. However, whereas Hunter’s vision, with its images of creation, birth and maternity, is ultimately a hopeful one, Smith’s is devoid of any feminine figure, suggesting a sterility in the human condition which can only lead to its annihilation.   Doggerland is haunting in its bleakness:  The wind blows, the branches creak and turn. Somewhere in the metal forest, a tree slumps, groans but does not quite fall.  The landscape holds fast, for a moment. For how long? It may be centuries. Barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water...    

Kindle Edition, UK, 208 pages

Expected publication: April 4th 2019 by Fourth Estate

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As a counterpoint to Ben Smith’s novel, I have chosen three classical works which share a minimalist/post-minimalist aesthetic.

First on the (play)list is “Industry” for amplified cello and electronics (1992) by American composer Michael Gordon (b. 1956), here performed by Ashley Bathgate.  The screeching feedback effects remind me of Doggerland's giant, rusting turbines.

Italian singer-songwriter-composer-artist-director Franco Battiato (b. 1945), with his obsession with Middle Eastern myth and religious traditions, is possibly the last person one would associate with a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel.  However, his Stockhausen-Prize-winning electronic piece L’Egitto Prima dell Sabbie (Egypt before the Sands), with its obsessive repetition of one simple rising scale, reflects on the one hand the expanse of the sea and, on the other hand, the mind-numbing weariness of the protagonists of Doggerland.  

    

In 2014, American composer John Luther Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for his 40-minute orchestral piece Become Ocean.  Like Doggerland, his piece evokes “the depth of the waves and the spray of the sea.  But it also warns us that ‘as the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean’.  You can listen to the piece here (performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra) and read about it on the brilliant Corymbus classical music blog.