6 - Casting About

Summary

WILD GEESE OVERHEAD

The 1930s was a difficult decade; the pressures of economic depression and the growing threat of war bore heavily on everyone, particularly on artists sensitive to the temper of the time. Accusations of ‘escapism’ were thrown at those who expressed a naive belief in the goodness of life and the joy of living. It may be that some of these accusations, aimed at Highland River, drove Gunn to attempt a confrontation with contemporary social ills and the degradations of urban existence.

This makes Wild Geese Overhead (1939), although inadequate as a novel, highly significant in Gunn's literary pilgrimage. The success of Highland River gave him the confidence to admit publicly that he was an intellectual, fully capable of expanding and justifying his experiences, and willing to tackle head-on the theme of the day: that the necessity to improve the general condition of society meant the inevitable subordination of the individual.

The experiences he is concerned with in Wild Geese Overhead are the epiphany (in its Greek, not its Christian sense) of joy and enlightenment, frequently described in Highland River, and the attack on the human mind by the disintegrating force of evil which is recorded in his Off in a Boat. It is significant that this book was written immediately before Wild Geese Overhead.

The rewards brought by Highland River encouraged Gunn to throw up his job in the Civil Service and sail away on a career as full-time writer. But before starting work he bought a motor boat and made his sea-journey down the west coast and round the Isles. Off in a Boat is his account of the trip.

It includes this passage:

I had been sleeping in the south wing of an old country mansion house when, sometime during the night, I awoke, sat up in bed in a room dim with starlight, and saw my door swing noiselessly open. The transition from sleep to sitting up watching the door open must have been almost instantaneous. I immediately went and stared into the long black corridor, but neither saw nor heard anything. Then I closed the door and went back to bed, but could not sleep, for I became aware – or rather I had an apprehension – of what I may tentatively call pure evil.