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Watership Down
The Book by Richard Adams
A
search on the Internet reveals over 250 versions of Watership
Down. A feat for even the most well-known of books. In 1985,
Penguin Books declared it 2nd in their list of all-time
bestsellers, second only to Animal Farm.
What is the secret behind this book's continual overwhelming popularity, which consistently wins it new fans, and always sees it time and again high up on favourite lists, and in polls of popular books, in lists, in reviews?
To the new reader, a book about 'fluffy bunnies' could easily put them off - make them think it a children's story. But a children's story it most definitely is not.
There can be no
doubt that the Rabbit is the most beloved animal of the English
countryside. In the 1970s there were violent riots and protests
when myxomatosis, an almost always fatal & terribly painful
disease, was introduced to the English countryside to 'cut-down'
on the number of rabbits, which farmers claimed were proving a
pest to their crops. The disease is particularly inhumane and
evil - it causes agonising blindness and dissolves parts of the
brain and other organs and causes all manner of secondary
effects, including pneumonia. All future re-introductions were
banned when some of the 'exterminators' were killed by animal
rights activists whilst trying to infest a rabbit warren. There
was also talk of the disease spreading out of control and
affecting rabbits and other pets in homes, which angered many
people up and down the country.
Richard Adams, the author of the book, describes how on journeys in the English countryside, he would make up stories about rabbits to entertain his children. A civil servant in Britain's Department of Environment, Adams was interested in nature and concerned about the environment, and these interests are strongly apparent in the book, which tells the story of a group of rabbits who are forced from their home by real estate development.
Although only published in a first edition of 2,500 in 1972, it was initially hailed as a children's classic and progressed to large sales when it was selected by Kaye Webb for Puffin because she was delighted by the way the rabbits talked to each other 'Like civil servants'.
With
American publication it became an adult and world-wide
bestseller, selling over a million copies in record time. In 1985
Penguin Books declared it second in their list of all time
bestsellers with sales figures of 5 million, second only to
Animal Farm, but ahead of The Canterbury Tales and The Odyssey.
It transformed the public perception of rabbits from that of
cuddly bunnies into heroic warriors who fought savagely for
dominance, and who were described with a degree of biological
realism unheard of in children's fiction. The animals defecated (passed
hraka), sought mates and conceived young. Even the rabbit
equivalent of a miscarriage, the reabsorption of young, is
described. Although The Times's recent obituary of the
naturalist, Robin Lockley, described the naturalist's book, The
Private Life of the Rabbit, as the inspiration for Watership Down
this was not the case. Adams did not discover Lockley's book
until he was about halfway through his first version. It did help
to add biological exactitude a nd the holograph shows his
subsequent revisions to credit female rabbits with the leading
role played in digging warrens. Indeed, Lockley has been heard to
say that the major storyline of a band of bucks going off in
search of a new warren was impossible. They would have left more
sensibly as mated pairs -- but this would have destroyed the plot.
The
world of children's publishing was not prepared for a book of
such stunning originality and the typescript was rejected several
times. 'It was seven times a lemon' says Adams, who has carefully
preserved the rejection letters. He wrote the novel unaware of
the conventions of length, age range, level of difficulty and
acceptable subject matter in the genre of juvenile publishing at
that time. It was first published by the small publishing firm of
Rex Collings, who admired the typescript precisely because it did
not fit the formula, a judgment vindicated when the book became a
critical and commercial success. Sales have been given continuing
impetus by B.B.C. radio readings, an animated film, a musical
version, a dramatic performance in Regent's Park and currently a
children's television series. It has never dropped out of the
public consciousness for long. The title has become synonymous
with rabbits. London cabbies say of the garrulous 'He's got more
rabbit than Watership Down'. Enterprising butchers advertised
'You've read the book, you've seen the film, now eat the cast'.
Richard Adams
celebrated his eightieth birthday in May of 2000, surrounded by
his family which now includes his daughters and sons-in-law and
six grandchildren. He must have looked around the festive tables
with some satisfaction since earlier in his marriage he longed
for children. 
This early frustration is one of the
ingredients of Watership Down, where a questing band of buck
rabbits search for a new warren and then realise that without
mates and progeny to populate it their trials were worthless.
Like Hazel, the hero of his novel, Adams felt the primitive
delight in the continuation of his blood as he looked at his
descendants: '. . . the extraordinary feeling that strength and
speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek
young bodies and healthy senses'. One granddaughter is already a
published author.
Adams can also look back on a career of contradictions, half spent anonymously as a civil servant and the rest in the public eye as the author of a world-wide bestselling novel. With the huge and continuing commercial success of this novel his life changed irrevocably. The civil service post was resigned and the family removed to the Isle of Man to avoid the punitive tax system of the time. All was changed and changed utterly. Huge sales in the United States guaranteed his financial future. He became a campus cult there because of the book's environmental concerns and sympathy for animal rights and the result of this was that he was in demand as a writer-in-residence. A year of tax exile and several stints at American universities entailed separation from his family which was effectively blown apart by the novel's success.
It
took American marketing to place the book in the adult publishing
list where the greatest sales are made. 'This isn't about a bunny.
It's about life and death', declared Connie Clausen at Macmillan
in promoting the novel's appeal across the age ranges. Like J.K.
Rowling's Harry Potter books, Watership Down has what is now
termed 'crossover appeal'. Adams enchanted his publicity team by
taking to the 'shocking hucksterism' of book promotion like a
duck to water and taking the repeated question 'Why rabbits?' in
his stride. He was the epitome of the American idea of an
Englishman, willingly posing for photographs hailing a taxi on
Fifth Avenue with a rolled umbrella, dressed in waistcoat, old
school tie and bowler hat. He travelled with English marmalade,
an egg cup and insisted on English mustard. Although he fitted
the stereotype, his readiness to talk without reserve was
untypical. Interviewers were surprised, too, by his personality.
They expected this author to be 'a gentle soul, rather misty-eyed
about Nature, probably someone shy and retiring', but, 'He is in
fact feisty, rather pugnacious . . . extraordinarily talkative
and utterly unsentimental - though at the same time subject to
swift tears . . . all these aspects of this remarkable
personality were on view in rapid succession'.
This remarkable personality did not go down so well with English critics when they interviewed Adams. Reviews for Watership Down were lyrical - Edward Blishen spoke of his 'trembling pleasure' on reading the book, but reviews and promotional interviews for subsequent novels were far less enthusiastic. Adams became so disappointed with critical reactions to his later novels that he was reluctant to be interviewed. Shardik, The Plague Dogs, The Girl in a Swing, Maia and Traveller have been major bestsellers in spite of hostile critics. A.N. Wilson reported that he could not admire the later work as much as he genuinely revered Watership Down. The Times critic said of Maia that it was a book not to be tossed aside lightly but to be thrown with great force - an unattributed quotation from Dorothy Parker. The mixed reception for later novels may be due to envy at the windfall fortune earnt by the first novel. A Lake District sheep farmer explained the hostility of critics in the pithy statement: 'Well, you did in your spare time, Richard, what they have been trying to do all their bloody lives'.
Surely the time has come
for a fairer appraisal of an author who has tackled so many
different subjects and won bestselling sales with at least six
novels? Adams is far from being confined to the category of
animal and nature writer. Shardik is concerned with a religious
cult focused on a bear (not anthropomorphised) and is set in the
primitive past of a fantasy empire where the author invents a new
world with its own geography, religion, customs, language and
fauna. It is a sustained exercise of the imagination, as
distanced from the reader as science fiction. It owes much to
Adams's Jungian analysis in its depiction of deep mythic levels
originating in the unconscious mind. This is an undertow in all
Adams's work.
Joseph
Campbell's study of comparative myth The Hero With a Thousand
Faces, also based on Jung's view of the collective unconscious,
is a continuing influence. Campbell's theory of the basic pattem
common to all myth, that of the hero's journey into a realm of
terrors to bring back some boon to save himself and his people is
a powerful ingredient in the best tales. The theory of this
monomyth made Adams realise that 'all the stories in the world
are really one story'. (George Lucas, the producer of Star Wars,
based his film on Campbell's theory and the huge success of the
film impressed other filmmakers to follow the pattern of the
monomyth in their choice of 'high concept' plots.) The Girl in a
Swing represents another departure. It is set in the contemporary
world and is an erotic ghost story. There is a mythical dimension
to the novel in that the heroine is possessed intermittently by
the goddess Aphrodite. This novel has tremendous narrative grip
and has commanded a readership second only to Watership Down in
the public lending right figures. The Plague Dogs is a polemic
against animal experimentation and is set in the modern world
with human and animal characters. Maia is a return to Bekia,
telling the progress of 15-year-old bedslave from prostitution to
respectable marriage. An actual historical period is the setting
for Adams's novel Traveller, which has a solidly researched
background in the American Civil War. It tells the story of
Confederate General Robert E. Lee's horse, Traveller. The
narrative is composed of a series of equine monologues addressed
to Tom, the stable cat. The horse's behaviour is backed by
research into The Mind of the Horse by Lucy Rees. As with many of
his novels, the ending is genuinely moving, with a sure touch on
scenes of death.
Adams
has not lost his inventive energy in spite of advancing years. In
1999 he returned to the characters of his first success with the
publication of Tales from Watership Down and has enjoyed renewed
success with his rabbit adventures. 2000 saw the publication of a
novel where the protagonist is, unusually, a folksong. The song,
also the title, is The Outlandish Knight. Adams has long had an
interest in folksong which he both sings and plays on a recorder.
The narrative follows the song and one family through three
generations from 1485 until the execution of the Babington
plotters. The narrative imposes difficulties for both author and
reader in that although the song remains a constant the
characters change with each generation, making heavy demands on
the ingenuity of the author and the reader's attention. The
England of six centuries ago is vividly realised, with its
savagery, sights and smells. The conception of folksong as a
linking technique in the action and the numerous other songs with
musical notation in the text is an original idea.
Our author's life has now come full circle with his return some years ago to his native Hampshire. He lives in a charming eighteenth-century house, hardly a stone's throw from the river Test and deep in the English countryside he describes so lovingly in his first and most magical novel. Indeed it is not far from the actual territory which is the setting for the rabbits of Watership Down. The house reflects the interests of its inhabitants - a large well-stocked cellar, an impressive library, some wonderful porcelain on which Mrs Elizabeth Adams is an authority and it is set in a garden ablaze with roses and dahlias. Sadly the last of the border collies is no more. He was called Tetter after a quotation from the Ghost in Hamlet, 'With a most instant tetter barked about'. He had his moment of fame when called to demonstrate his obedience at an industrial tribunal against an enraged gamekeeper. 'Author's Collie Takes Stand on Grumpy Gamekeeper' screamed the headline the next day. Tetter performed impeccably an d the case was won. In spite of three hip replacements, Adams manages to visit his local pub to play piquet most evenings and continues to write. He has recently returned from a trip to America to help launch Camp Fiver, a recreational camp for underprivileged children in New York State. This is a philanthropic project organised by a rich admirer of Watership Down who named the camp after his favourite rabbit in the story - an instance of the continuing influence of the tale, which like Fiver's blood in the novel is passed on through generations.
They say that the great secret of success in this country is longevity. Only live to be eighty and you will be a hero or a guru. In this case Richard Adams is a literary giant. Why has this man of letters not yetbeen honoured? He has produced six major novels, one at least an enduring classic, together with several collections of short stories, travel writing, poetry and works on natural history. He has been president of the R.S.P.C.A., an animal rights campaigner and active in the campaign to restore the land of Greenfield Common to the people. In his time as a civil servant he put in train the Clean Air Act and the Thames Barrage - London may be grateful for no more choking smog or fear of inundation. He travels widely to give lectures and readings. Although Adams is a world-wide bestselling author the literary establishment of Britain has been dismissive. 'Probably no other contemporary novelist suffers from so much condescension or critical dismissal from so many literary intellectuals' commented Phillip Vine in 1985. It seems that popularity and large sales cannot command literary merit. But maybe the time has come for a reappraisal. There has been some recognition. He has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and had the social accolade of lunch with the Queen. In any case, Adams's large and faithful readership ignore the literati and the critics. They buy his books in huge numbers, because they enjoy them. The hackneyed phrase of the blurb writer 'a master storyteller' happens, in Adams's case, to be true.
Written &
Compiled by Matt 'devolution' Warne.
Excerpts courtesy of the BBC, Joan Bridgeman
© Synergy UK 2004