Andrew Crumey - The Secret Knowledge

'Any young man of spirit and intelligence moves naturally between the light of the surface & the darker regions beneath'.

Beginning in 1913 at a Parisian fair, Andrew Crumey’s The Secret Knowledge is a shadow history of the twentieth century, following a thread of thought from early modernism through the Marxism of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin to the 'post-theory' present. The title brings to mind The Secret Agent and The Secret History, which are both appropriate comparisons; the opening sections occupy the same milieu of anarchists, ‘dreamers and scholars’ as Conrad’s novel, while the present-day sections explore the harmful effects of attempting to live up to old-fashioned ideals in modern society, as in Donna Tartt’s book.

The ‘secret knowledge’ of the title refers to an unfinished piece of music, written by the unknown composer Pierre Klaeur. Commissioned by a mysterious group to give musical form to their ideas about alternate realities, Klaeur commits suicide before the piece can be finished, sparking a clandestine struggle for control of his legacy between his family, fiancée and various mysterious strangers. In the present day, washed up concert pianist and music tutor David Conroy is presented with the original score of The Secret Knowledge by the dealer Claude Verrier, seeing it as an opportunity to revive his career. In between these events, the novel takes in Scottish trade union meetings, the suicide of Walter Benjamin and the later battle between Adorno and Hannah Arendt for control of Benjamin’s legacy.

Klaeur’s score, which passes through the hands of all these philosophers and artists, represents a moment in time when musicians like Arnold Schoenberg were struggling to come to terms with modernism, creating work which used atonality and dissonance to reflect the jarring effects of industrial society. His work is evasive, impossible to pin down; Conroy describes the piece’s 'formless progressions of bewildering complexity… its shape constantly altering'. When he asks his pupil Paige to play The Secret Knowledge, 'he senses a different orchestration from what he had previously imagined'. Describing Klauer’s work, Conroy (who has more than a passing acquaintance with the critical studies syllabus for Manchester University undergrads) says it ‘encapsulates the fraught opposition between autonomy & commodification that is the essence of bourgeois art'.

The Secret Knowledge is variously stolen, traded, gifted and bought, with each owner adding a level of mystique to the physical artifact. As this process continues, the music becomes divorced from its original meaning, becoming something of a floating signifier. By the time it reaches Adorno, it is little more than a work of 'genuine, if modest, artistic talent'. Further still down the line, for Paige it is merely a chance to launch a career in pop-classics, bereft of any deeper meaning. Roland Barthes's essay The Death of The Author is important here. Because Klaeur is unknowable, the owners of The Secret Knowledge are forced to deal directly with the score. Each generation therefore assigns its own valuation and interpretation to Klaeur's work. Crumey is critical of this process; in a profit-obsessed society, and without the anchoring presence of the author-figure, The Secret Knowledge becomes devoid of meaning. What began as a radical piece of art is now no more than a commercial opportunity.

Conroy is the last person to try to connect with Klaeur’s work on an intellectual level, but the struggle to reconcile the ideas contained within The Secret Knowledge with the demands of life in late capitalist society forces him to the brink of a breakdown. While Klaeur could move easily between the light of the surface and the depths beneath, now the surface spectacle is so all-encompassing that anyone attempting to dive deeper will end up getting the bends.

Klaeur's tale finds a parallel in that of Walter Benjamin. Benjamin committed suicide in Spain whilst trying to flee the Nazis, leaving his masterpiece, The Arcades Project, unfinished. His papers (The Secret Knowledge among them) find their way to Adorno, via Arendt, but are subject to severe editing by his former friend. Adorno wishes to force his work into an existing conceptual framework, whereas Arendt seeks to sanctify him. Crumey dramatizes a 1967 conference at which five speakers give radically different interpretations of Benjamin’s life and work, before being drowned out by a shambolic and irrelevant student protest. Benjamin has been sentimentalised, the story of his death taking precedence over the content of his work.

A sense of incompleteness, and lack of agency, permeates the novel. Klauer and Benjamin leave their work unfinished, allowing their writing to be manipulated by others. Paige is haunted by memories of a miscarriage, and is used as a pawn in a power struggle between Conroy and Claude Verrier, who alternately flatters and dismisses her. Throughout the novel, Crumey challenges the notions of dialectical progress – narrators are unreliable, conspiracies are hinted at but unresolved – truth and experience here are slippery, elusive, hard to pin down. The characters build up webs of belief around themselves, seeing the world through conspirator’s eyes – shared experience is impossible with this post-modern mindset. 

To be critical, while The Secret Knowledge is intellectually exciting and well-plotted, the prose doesn’t always rise to the same heights. It is never clunky, but only occasionally soars. The female characters lack dynamism, too often being passed from one man to another, operating in roles allocated to them by others rather than defining their own existences; whereas Klauer and Benjamin leave behind philosophically important works, Paige’s unfinished business is a ‘formless lump like a pink cabbage stalk’.

The novel represents a perfect match between author and publisher; Crumey’s text occupies the same shadow world of conspiracy and idealism as many of Dedalus’s fin-de-siecle reprints, and hopefully the relationship will be a profitable one for both parties. Fittingly, there are a number of interpretations open to readers, and Crumey resists easy conclusions. It is exciting to see a writer engaging with the likes of Adorno, Benjamin and Barthes in a modern novel, and hopefully this ambition will be embraced by readers. This is a novel with real cult appeal, and looks set to make a big impact as word of mouth spreads.