‘Jack Maggs’: Confounding Expectations Great and Small

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Thursday, Feb. 12, 1998 | 9:32 a.m.

At the opening of "Jack Maggs," the sixth and latest novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, the title character arrives by coach in London in mid-April 1837. "He was a tall man in his forties," the extravagant narrative informs us, "so big in the chest and broad in the shoulder that his fellows on the bench seat had felt the strain of his presence, but what his occupation was, or what he planned to do in London, they had not the least idea."

What Jack Maggs does in London is curious. He makes his way to Great Queen Street and knocks on the door of No. 27, "rap-rap-rap," excited to behold this property at long last. When the maid from next door appears, tells him that the resident of 27 has gone away and asks him if by chance he's the new footman, Maggs announces that yes, he is a footman, and at once accepts a position as such in her household.

That very evening Maggs serves at a dinner party where one of the guests is Tobias Oates, a rising young novelist with an interest in mesmerism. When Maggs is stricken mid-meal with a painful attack of tic douloureux, Oates relieves him by putting him under hypnosis and learns at the same time that Maggs is a convicted criminal from New South Wales at risk of being hanged for being back in England.

The story plunges headlong into further intricate complications. When Maggs overhears that Oates knows of a so-called "Thief-taker" who "could find any man in England," he strikes a bargain with the writer. If Oates will introduce him to this man, Maggs will participate in further sessions of hypnosis. Oates agrees because he sees in Maggs "the Criminal Mind awaiting its first cartographer."

What Maggs wants from the Thief-taker is to find the resident of No. 27 who has drawn him back to England. This is one Henry Phipps, whom Maggs considers his son and for whom he has acted as a secret patron after rescuing him as a child from an orphanage.

Yet the reader is willingly drawn along, charmed by the story's details, susceptible to the plot's contrivances, always surprised by the reversals, misunderstandings, coincidences, exaggerations, interlocking narratives and other entertaining devices of vintage Victorian storytelling.

As always, Carey writes with energy and fantastic inventiveness. But he seems more in control here than he has in any of his previous novels, including "Bliss," "Illywhacker," "Oscar and Lucinda," "The Tax Inspector" and "The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith."

The only troubling thing is the seeming datedness of the novel's themes, among them the unfair oppression of the lower classes in 19th-century England and the extent of luck and amoral resourcefulness required to escape from grinding poverty. Yet just as you begin to wonder about the point of Carey's doing what has been done before, you notice other details that are familiar about the novel.

You notice Tobias Oates, the writer, for one. In the corners of his study, he "stored not only his Evidence, but also experiments, sketches, notes, his workings-up of the characters who he hoped would one day make his name, not just as the author of comic adventures, but as a novelist who might topple Thackeray himself."

He got his start writing sketches for The Chronicle. His father is a scoundrel who has been in trouble with the law. The first name Tobias even contains the letters that spell a variation of the pen-name, Boz, under which his real-life counterpart published similar sketches. He is clearly modeled on Charles Dickens.

Having realized this, you recognize that Maggs is a version of Magwitch, the criminal turned wealthy benefactor in "Great Expectations." And Phipps, of course, is Pip, Magwitch's secret ward. So what you are also reading is a story that might have inspired Dickens to write that novel.

And thus "Jack Maggs" divides itself into both a period fiction and a form of historical novel, each serving as a mirror that reflects and adds dimension to the other.

What is Carey's point, if any, in doing this? Obviously, he is commenting on "Great Expectations." By turning the Pip figure into a prancing villain, as he does, he is refusing to go along with Dickens' forgiveness of Pip's initial ingratitude toward Magwitch. This point is underscored by an ending in which Jack Maggs says in effect that England can go hang if it doesn't want him; he'll take the colonies anyway.

And then Carey has wonderful fun imagining in effect what the Magwitch character would have thought of "Great Expectations." Maggs is enraged by the novel Oates writes about him. He considers himself to have been robbed and demands that the manuscript be consigned to Oates' fireplace. As it burns, a wind blows down the chimney and carries "the black and broken paper out into the room."

The text continues: "The men leapt back, coughing and waving their hands. The burnt papers rose, like black moths, as high as the ceiling."

Yet the machinery of what Carey has done is far more engaging than any message it sends. "Jack Maggs" is a tale of multiple narratives that intertwine like strands of DNA encoding an unusual form of literary life. Only a spoilsport would want to deconstruct them.

A decade ago, finding himself often compared with Dickens, Carey remarked in an interview: "I've never really read Dickens. I quit 'Bleak House' after I encountered that nauseatingly good little girl. But I will read Dickens one day, I promise."

Now he has clearly made good on his promise. And flattered the master with an imitation so clever that it has a life all its own.

Publication notes:

JACK MAGGS

By Peter Carey

Illustrated. 306 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.