Abstract
This article places Graham Swift’s latest novel Here We Are (2020) in the context of his previous writing and argues that much of his fiction is underpinned by the characters’ desire to transcend the limitations of their ordinary lives and to seek solace or a temporary escape within the realm of illusion. The analysis aims to demonstrate that the opposition between the two realms is the central preoccupation in Here We Are. The wish to surmount the mundane is fulfilled quite literally through the protagonist’s dedication to the practice of magic. The meaning of magic as a craft is briefly discussed, especially its quasi-religious connotations. It is also suggested that magic may be a tentative, personal answer to the problem of the “disenchantment” of the world, as diagnosed by Max Weber a hundred years ago. In Swift’s novel, far from being only a set of professional skills, magic creates an illusory realm, alternative to and more appealing than daily life.
Highlights
It has become a cliché in the criticism on the work of Graham Swift that his fiction is firmly grounded in ordinary life
The claim made by Daniel Lea in his 2005 monograph on Swift still holds true for most of the writer’s output: Swift’s fiction can be relatively summarised: it customarily involves monologic narration either by a single figure or by a group whose voices compete with each other; his narrators are principally men of late middle age who reflect upon their lives as a series of compromises, and who rue their failure to have been more than they were; they are men who
New Horizons in English Studies are commonly ineffective in interpersonal relationships and exhibit none of the stereotypical characteristics of manly being. (2005, 2)
Summary
These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,. U The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. Like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. I think the world cannot bear to be only what it is. The world always wants another world, a shadow, an echo, a model of itself
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