DEARsaster (n): Existential angst and anxiety caused by the surprise release of a new book by one of your favourite authors whilst in the middle of a long and/or dense book you are really enjoying.
So I'm taking my usual Monday mid-morning procrastination stroll through a local bookstore when KABLAM!!! I'm blindsided by the new Margaret Atwood novel MADDADDAM. I knew it was coming out sometime soon - September? Christmas? 2017? - but it never really occurred to me that she'd catch me so very unawares. It's as if the genetically modified pig on the cover flew it express onto the bookshelves just to screw with my perfectly ordered reading life. Now I can't say I was the greatest fan of the first two parts of her post-Apocalyptic trilogy (Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood), but c'mon... she is, to paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, Margaret Friggin' Atwood, a true living legend whose body of incredibly varied work has landed her firmly on the Drop Everything And Read list. What's more, MADDADDAM is in hardcover! That's like book crack for me! True to form, I do the sensible thing any addict would do - despite having it on order from overseas, I pick it up here. Support the local book trade, yadda yadda yadda (Read: major delayed gratification fail).
One problem. I'm midway through a debut novel that I am thoroughly enjoying but that, despite only being 300 pages long, is taking me an inordinate amount of time to finish. Usually I'd polish something that length off in one to two days tops. La Vida Doble by Arturo Fontaine, however, is different. It demands to be savoured, which is precisely what I've been doing for the past week. I'm not going to give much away until I'm done and have some time to properly digest it, save only to say that it's one of the best novels of Chile's Dirty War that I've ever read (I seem to be saying that a lot lately).
So here's the dilemma, and the very essence of the DEARsaster: Do I put down a book I'm loving for an author I've sworn to drop everything to read?
I suppose there's an easy solution in trying to read the two simultaneously. I'm often reading two, three, even four books at once. In this case, however, I can't help but feel it would be an injustice to both if I tried (plus, I'm technically already reading the first volume of the Javier Marias trilogy and the collected short stories of Terry Pratchett). The absurdist in me can't help wanting to try the left-brain/right-brain challenge and literally read both at the same time; one in each hand, one eye on each book. Tempting. Or I could run around in circles as if this is the most ginormously catastrophic problem in the world right now. Clearly I have chosen option three.
As you can tell, I don't profess to have the answer but God knows I need one soon. My poor little legs have grown accustomed to my sedentary life. Please... please don't make me run anymore.
Showing posts with label DEAR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DEAR. Show all posts
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Quarry by Iain Banks
on Thursday, June 20, 2013
Grief is a pretty crappy basis for a book review. Iain Banks's untimely death earlier this month was sad - especially for those of us who worshipped his early work - but we must be careful not to lionise his final novel without bothering to properly read it. Try tell that to other reviewers, who have called The Quarry a return to form, classic Banks catching his second wind or any number of similar platitudes. Put simply, it isn't. Thankfully, it also is not the sort of abomination that saw him demoted from my DEAR list three books ago. So while you had better not approach it expecting The Bridge, Complicity or The Wasp Factory, you can also safely pick it up without catching syphilis from another The Steep Approach To Garbadale.
By now you all would have heard the plot - Kit, an Aspergers teen (apparently Banks wasn't hip to the new DSM-5), lives in a house with his cancer stricken dad when a bunch of the latter's old friends come for one last weekend hoorah. They talk, they reminisce, they fight, they search for the home made porno they made as uni students. When he's not playing computer games, Kit tries to figure out who his mum is. Then, of course, there is the quarry itself, ever-expanding, soon to consume the land on which Kit's house stands. Hello thinly-veiled metaphor.
It is a strange beast, this book, almost a crucible of Banks's earlier works. It's got the slightly off-kilter narrator (although Kit is extremely reliable given he cannot lie whereas Frank in The Wasp Factory was the polar opposite - even he didn't know the truth). It takes place in a typically Banksian environment; hostile, menacing, yet strangely familiar. There's a science fiction thread, weak though it is, with occasional narrative forays into HeroSpace, a World of Warcraft-like online game. Heck, one of the climactic scenes even takes place on a friggin' bridge. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of what I didn't like about late era Iain Banks. That guy liked to grab a bunch of mostly annoying characters, all of whom had long ago fled their home towns, and plonk them right back where they started. There's always a 'big' reason, in this case Guy's cancer. There's always a lot of waxing lyrical, a settling of scores, a lot of boring chatter. The Quarry is no different. Guy's friends can talk. A lot. Of shit. Banks pretends there's a plot to be found - the porno, the mum, the quarry - but even the most generous reader would struggle to credit them with any substance.
The novel's real saving grace is Guy himself, a truly wonderful Banksian creation. The bloke is bitter, cantankerous and full of hilariously jaded opinions on just about everything. It is the luxury of the dying, I suppose. Obviously, many people will read Guy's opinions as those of Banks himself. The two have (had) a lot in common. Yet, according to the author's wife, Banks had finished the novel well before being told of his diagnosis. If that's true, it certainly is a strange coincidence. Either way, Guy gives Banks a fantastic platform to air a whole bunch of home truths about our shitty world.
Going purely on recent form (The Steep Approach To Garbadale, Transition, Stonemouth... well, pretty much everything post-Complicity), The Quarry ought to have sucked wasp factories. It doesn't. That said, it is nowhere near the calibre of his early works. Neither whimper, nor bang, Iain Banks has gone out with a moderate pop. At least I'll always have The Bridge.
3 Out Of 5 Crow Roads
By now you all would have heard the plot - Kit, an Aspergers teen (apparently Banks wasn't hip to the new DSM-5), lives in a house with his cancer stricken dad when a bunch of the latter's old friends come for one last weekend hoorah. They talk, they reminisce, they fight, they search for the home made porno they made as uni students. When he's not playing computer games, Kit tries to figure out who his mum is. Then, of course, there is the quarry itself, ever-expanding, soon to consume the land on which Kit's house stands. Hello thinly-veiled metaphor.
It is a strange beast, this book, almost a crucible of Banks's earlier works. It's got the slightly off-kilter narrator (although Kit is extremely reliable given he cannot lie whereas Frank in The Wasp Factory was the polar opposite - even he didn't know the truth). It takes place in a typically Banksian environment; hostile, menacing, yet strangely familiar. There's a science fiction thread, weak though it is, with occasional narrative forays into HeroSpace, a World of Warcraft-like online game. Heck, one of the climactic scenes even takes place on a friggin' bridge. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of what I didn't like about late era Iain Banks. That guy liked to grab a bunch of mostly annoying characters, all of whom had long ago fled their home towns, and plonk them right back where they started. There's always a 'big' reason, in this case Guy's cancer. There's always a lot of waxing lyrical, a settling of scores, a lot of boring chatter. The Quarry is no different. Guy's friends can talk. A lot. Of shit. Banks pretends there's a plot to be found - the porno, the mum, the quarry - but even the most generous reader would struggle to credit them with any substance.
The novel's real saving grace is Guy himself, a truly wonderful Banksian creation. The bloke is bitter, cantankerous and full of hilariously jaded opinions on just about everything. It is the luxury of the dying, I suppose. Obviously, many people will read Guy's opinions as those of Banks himself. The two have (had) a lot in common. Yet, according to the author's wife, Banks had finished the novel well before being told of his diagnosis. If that's true, it certainly is a strange coincidence. Either way, Guy gives Banks a fantastic platform to air a whole bunch of home truths about our shitty world.
Going purely on recent form (The Steep Approach To Garbadale, Transition, Stonemouth... well, pretty much everything post-Complicity), The Quarry ought to have sucked wasp factories. It doesn't. That said, it is nowhere near the calibre of his early works. Neither whimper, nor bang, Iain Banks has gone out with a moderate pop. At least I'll always have The Bridge.
3 Out Of 5 Crow Roads
Holy Horizons! Doctorow's Back (But Don't Hold Your Breath)
on Monday, June 10, 2013
Well, this might be looking forward a little too much, but I just got word that there will be a new E.L. Doctorow book, Andrew's Brain, coming out in January 2014. Looks weird and fascinating. Pretty great way to kick off the year. Could it be that we will have two amazing literary years in a row? Tell me there's also another Cormac McCarthy and my year will be complete six months before it's even started. Oh the joy!
Vale Banks and Banks 2.0
A great loss today to my personal literary universe with the death of two great authors in one, Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks. Although his literary incarnation kind of died five books ago, sci-fi Banks was still alive and kicking, adding another worthwhile volume to the Culture series last year with The Hydrogen Sonata. Think what you will of him, but I will always credit The Bridge as the single most important book of my young adult life, teaching me that 'literary fiction' need not be limited, that emotion can defy logic, so long as imagination is given free reign on the page. Now I await The Quarry, due for release next month and hope against hope that it isn't crap.
Microviews Vol. 31: Just The Fax, Ma'am
on Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Last Girlfriend on Earth by Simon Rich
When a story collection kicks off with an unused condom reminiscing about the time it spent in a teenager's wallet, you know you're in for a fun ride (so to speak). Simon Rich continues his domination of all things chuckleworthy with this quick follow-up to last year's arse-kicking, What In God's Name. The stories are many and varied, taking in that essential human concern - love - and skewering it from all angles. There's the imaginary friend (a goat) that totally misunderstands the nature of his friendship and tries to bust a move. There's the scared-straight program for schmucks at risk of falling into a long term relationship. And I am still smirking at the scientist who turns to time travel in his desperate quest to figure out what would constitute a meaningful, personal present for his girlfriend. They're quick. They're punchy. They're a barrel of laughs. Or monkeys. Or monkeys laughing. On barrels. Just read it.
4 Out Of 5 Banana Peels
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
It's easy to look back on the hippy movement with smoke-tinged, rose coloured glasses. Free love, great music, lots and lots of drugs. If you weren't on board, man, you were either a prude or a nerd. In her debut novel, Lauren Groff picks apart the hippy mythos to reveal its sad, almost pathetic heart in this tale of one particular commune (read: cult) and the fractured lives of those who lived within it. Arcadia has much to offer - beautiful prose, a sober outlook, mild excoriation - and yet I couldn't quite lose myself in its pages. Not sure why. Bloody hippies.
3.5 Our Of 5 Calming Sutras
All That Is by James Salter
Believe the hype, and you'll think that Slater's first novel in 30 years is THE publishing event of 2013, the one that will save literature from all these hipster upstarts currently polluting the landscape. Using a returned veteran of the US's Pacific campaign in WW2 as a prism, All That Is charts the evolution (or is that devolution?) of American society in the post-war years. In many ways, the novel resembles a glacier - you are carried along by its slow power, but sit down with it too long and your nuts are likely to freeze.
3.5 Out of 5 Middle Americans
Here And Now by Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee
Remember that old cartoon where the little yappy dog bounces around the older, cooler dog hoping to be his best friend? Yes? Then you'll pretty much know what to expect when you read this bushel of letters between the intermittently excellent Paul Auster and as-close-to-God-as-we're-likely-to-find, Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. It's a scattergun smorgasbord touching on all sorts of blokey stuff (friendship, sport, ageing), literary stuff (the art of writing, criticism, James Wood and his hatred of all things Auster), political stuff (American, South African, Israeli, marital) and technological stuff (the cutting edge use of fax machines). As you might expect, it is a somewhat lopsided affair; for the most part we watch Auster playing straight man to Coetzee's sermons from the mount. A bigger problem is the flimsiness of the contrivance in the first place. I never really felt the depth of their friendship. Moreover, there was an ever-present sense of self-consciousness, as if they knew their correspondence would be published. Still worth a read, though
3.5 Out Of 5 David Schwimmers
Trieste by Dasa Drndic
Since The Infatuations, I have been languishing in a literary swamp of mediocrity, unable to find anything that even remotely excites me. Desperate times call for desperate measures and so I decided to do something I almost never do. Reread the last book I remember truly loving. I need not rabbit on about how great a novel Trieste is. If I haven't convinced you to read it yet, nothing I can do now will change your mind. You are dead inside. If you ever had a soul (which I seriously doubt), it is gone. Thankfully, others have joined in the fandom since my first reading. Indeed, much greater literary figures than me have been trumpeting its brilliance and now it is in the running for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. There is, however, one downside: now I'm in a post-Trieste slump. Damn it.
5 Out Of 5 Books Of The Year
When a story collection kicks off with an unused condom reminiscing about the time it spent in a teenager's wallet, you know you're in for a fun ride (so to speak). Simon Rich continues his domination of all things chuckleworthy with this quick follow-up to last year's arse-kicking, What In God's Name. The stories are many and varied, taking in that essential human concern - love - and skewering it from all angles. There's the imaginary friend (a goat) that totally misunderstands the nature of his friendship and tries to bust a move. There's the scared-straight program for schmucks at risk of falling into a long term relationship. And I am still smirking at the scientist who turns to time travel in his desperate quest to figure out what would constitute a meaningful, personal present for his girlfriend. They're quick. They're punchy. They're a barrel of laughs. Or monkeys. Or monkeys laughing. On barrels. Just read it.
4 Out Of 5 Banana Peels
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
It's easy to look back on the hippy movement with smoke-tinged, rose coloured glasses. Free love, great music, lots and lots of drugs. If you weren't on board, man, you were either a prude or a nerd. In her debut novel, Lauren Groff picks apart the hippy mythos to reveal its sad, almost pathetic heart in this tale of one particular commune (read: cult) and the fractured lives of those who lived within it. Arcadia has much to offer - beautiful prose, a sober outlook, mild excoriation - and yet I couldn't quite lose myself in its pages. Not sure why. Bloody hippies.
3.5 Our Of 5 Calming Sutras
All That Is by James Salter
Believe the hype, and you'll think that Slater's first novel in 30 years is THE publishing event of 2013, the one that will save literature from all these hipster upstarts currently polluting the landscape. Using a returned veteran of the US's Pacific campaign in WW2 as a prism, All That Is charts the evolution (or is that devolution?) of American society in the post-war years. In many ways, the novel resembles a glacier - you are carried along by its slow power, but sit down with it too long and your nuts are likely to freeze.
3.5 Out of 5 Middle Americans
Here And Now by Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee
Remember that old cartoon where the little yappy dog bounces around the older, cooler dog hoping to be his best friend? Yes? Then you'll pretty much know what to expect when you read this bushel of letters between the intermittently excellent Paul Auster and as-close-to-God-as-we're-likely-to-find, Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. It's a scattergun smorgasbord touching on all sorts of blokey stuff (friendship, sport, ageing), literary stuff (the art of writing, criticism, James Wood and his hatred of all things Auster), political stuff (American, South African, Israeli, marital) and technological stuff (the cutting edge use of fax machines). As you might expect, it is a somewhat lopsided affair; for the most part we watch Auster playing straight man to Coetzee's sermons from the mount. A bigger problem is the flimsiness of the contrivance in the first place. I never really felt the depth of their friendship. Moreover, there was an ever-present sense of self-consciousness, as if they knew their correspondence would be published. Still worth a read, though
3.5 Out Of 5 David Schwimmers
Trieste by Dasa Drndic
Since The Infatuations, I have been languishing in a literary swamp of mediocrity, unable to find anything that even remotely excites me. Desperate times call for desperate measures and so I decided to do something I almost never do. Reread the last book I remember truly loving. I need not rabbit on about how great a novel Trieste is. If I haven't convinced you to read it yet, nothing I can do now will change your mind. You are dead inside. If you ever had a soul (which I seriously doubt), it is gone. Thankfully, others have joined in the fandom since my first reading. Indeed, much greater literary figures than me have been trumpeting its brilliance and now it is in the running for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. There is, however, one downside: now I'm in a post-Trieste slump. Damn it.
5 Out Of 5 Books Of The Year
First World Reading Problems Vol. 1: Translation Constipation
on Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Translation Constipation (n): The anxious but seemingly fruitless wait for newly translated works by your favourite authors to be released into the swishing toilet of public consumption.
Without a doubt, my reading discovery of 2013 has been Goncalo M. Tavares. The guy is everything I look for in an author; funny, intelligent and mind-meltingly original. After the braingasm that was The Neighbourhood, I jumped headfirst into his Kingdom series, starting with Jerusalem and then moving straight on to Joseph Walser's Machine. It seemed each book I read was better than the last. But then something awful happened. I came to the end of the trail. As I reached for Learning To Pray In The Age of Technology, I realised that it was the last of Tavares's books available in translation.
Cue the neuroses, the night sweats.
I put the book back down, afraid to find myself bereft of such literary gold. Ever the resourceful guy, I went straight to the website for Dalkey Archives to investigate. The Kingdom series is made up of four books; the three I mentioned and another called Klaus Klump: A Man. Leaving aside how absolutely awesome a book called Klaus Klump just has to be, I thought it logical that Dalkey would be set to release it any day now. I mean, who would leave a brother hanging like that? I'll tell you who. Dalkey Archives. Clicking through the forthcoming titles page I saw a whole lot of hullabaloo being made of Desmond Hogan and Alvaro Enrigue but there's sweet nada about Tavares. It's an outrage, I tell you!
I vaguely recall feeling similar frustration with Hans Fallada and Irene Nemirovsky but, for as long as I was loving their work, there always seemed to be another title in the offing. I also know that a number of other non-English-speaking authors that I love have works yet to be translated: Enrique Vila-Matas, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, even Saramago. So why such an extreme reaction when it comes to Tavares? Because the guy is literary crack cocaine and I'm damn well addicted, that's why. Not just Pepsi Max 1.25 litres a day addicted, either. I'm talking beat up a nun, mug a girl scout, rub myself against broken glass addicted.
Please Dalkey Archive... Just Klaus Klump. Then I won't annoy you again. Until the bats come calling again in my poor empty warehouse of a brain... We all know there's another 13 instalments of The Neighbourhood you have yet to release. Don't do it for me. Do it for that sweet, innocent nun.
Without a doubt, my reading discovery of 2013 has been Goncalo M. Tavares. The guy is everything I look for in an author; funny, intelligent and mind-meltingly original. After the braingasm that was The Neighbourhood, I jumped headfirst into his Kingdom series, starting with Jerusalem and then moving straight on to Joseph Walser's Machine. It seemed each book I read was better than the last. But then something awful happened. I came to the end of the trail. As I reached for Learning To Pray In The Age of Technology, I realised that it was the last of Tavares's books available in translation.
Cue the neuroses, the night sweats.
I put the book back down, afraid to find myself bereft of such literary gold. Ever the resourceful guy, I went straight to the website for Dalkey Archives to investigate. The Kingdom series is made up of four books; the three I mentioned and another called Klaus Klump: A Man. Leaving aside how absolutely awesome a book called Klaus Klump just has to be, I thought it logical that Dalkey would be set to release it any day now. I mean, who would leave a brother hanging like that? I'll tell you who. Dalkey Archives. Clicking through the forthcoming titles page I saw a whole lot of hullabaloo being made of Desmond Hogan and Alvaro Enrigue but there's sweet nada about Tavares. It's an outrage, I tell you!
I vaguely recall feeling similar frustration with Hans Fallada and Irene Nemirovsky but, for as long as I was loving their work, there always seemed to be another title in the offing. I also know that a number of other non-English-speaking authors that I love have works yet to be translated: Enrique Vila-Matas, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, even Saramago. So why such an extreme reaction when it comes to Tavares? Because the guy is literary crack cocaine and I'm damn well addicted, that's why. Not just Pepsi Max 1.25 litres a day addicted, either. I'm talking beat up a nun, mug a girl scout, rub myself against broken glass addicted.
Please Dalkey Archive... Just Klaus Klump. Then I won't annoy you again. Until the bats come calling again in my poor empty warehouse of a brain... We all know there's another 13 instalments of The Neighbourhood you have yet to release. Don't do it for me. Do it for that sweet, innocent nun.
Microviews Vol. 29: Grumplestiltskin Strikes Again
on Saturday, April 13, 2013
It's probably just the post-Infatuations slump, but nothing really seems to be grabbing me at the moment. In fact, had it not been for my new DEAR author, Goncalo Tavares, I'd have put this down as one of the least inspiring reading weeks in recent memory. Yep, Tavares aside, it was pretty ordinary. Ho hum. At least I cracked the half ton for the year. April 14 and I've knocked over (not to mention reviewed) fifty-three books!
My Name Was Judas by CK Stead
Between Jose Saramago, Colm Toibin, Jim Crace and CK Stead, we could almost construct a Third Testament. Here the most maligned bloke in history gets to put in his two cents (or should that be silver coins?) and while it is generally compelling and challenges some troubling theological assumptions, it ain't a patch on Toibin's Mary. For addicts of apocrypha only...
3 Out Of 5 Traitor's Kisses
Julia by Otto De Kat
I am throwing down the gauntlet and calling shenanigans on the endless deluge of Holocaust fiction that follows the same narrative trajectory: guy falls for girl, evil Nazi regime drives guy and girl apart, guy looks back as an old man wondering what happened, guy finds out by some strange coincidence that girl was actually spy/resistance fighter/heroine and had to sacrifice her true love for the greater good. Sure, Julia is a lovely example of this story, but seriously folks...
3 Out Of 5 Coded Letters
Donnybrook by Frank Bill
If you can get through the depraved brutality of the first three pages of this novel, you're doing well. Persevere and you're in for one hell of a bourbon-fuelled clusterfuck of violence. Set in the lead-up to a three-day bare knuckle tournament, Donnybrook follows a cast of the most insane, unlikeable, desperate gutter dwellers as they double, triple and quadruple cross one another for the love of drugs and money. It ain't subtle, but it's pretty darn fun.
3.5 Out Of 5 Speedballs
Joseph Walser's Machine by Goncalo M. Tavares
I'm not sure of the order in which Tavares's Kingdom series is supposed to be read, but this is my second of the four (of which only three are available in translation). Jerusalem was a great spin on noir, not to mention a cool iteration of Soul Asylum's best song, String Of Pearls, but it pales next to the brilliance of Joseph Walser's Machine. The more I read of him, the more Tavares reminds me of Georges Perec with his constant innovation and experimentation, albeit without the wacky impenetrability. JSM is a perplexing riff on the concept of routine, with Tavares throwing slight changes to the perfectly ordered world that Walser - an archetypal pathetic functionary - has constructed for himself. Tavares's point is clear - routine destroys the human soul. Having experienced this wonderful little novel, I'm inclined to agree.
4.5 Out Of 5 Closely Watched Clocks
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Is it just me or are we drowning in heavily workshopped, MFA-spawned, middle-American, slice of Jewish family life novels? At the risk of being sniped from crystal palaces, I'm just going to go ahead and say that I've stopped caring about these semi-dysfunctional families and their first world problems. Attenberg brings an interesting structural spin to The Middlesteins - the chapters follow the weight gain of the morbidly obese matriarch Edie and the resulting familial disintegration - but this could be any of a number of recent works from the Critically Approved Literature factory. It is a lovely book, to be sure, but at some point even the best attended circle jerk must come to an end.
3.5 Out of 5 Gilbert Grapes
My Name Was Judas by CK Stead
Between Jose Saramago, Colm Toibin, Jim Crace and CK Stead, we could almost construct a Third Testament. Here the most maligned bloke in history gets to put in his two cents (or should that be silver coins?) and while it is generally compelling and challenges some troubling theological assumptions, it ain't a patch on Toibin's Mary. For addicts of apocrypha only...
3 Out Of 5 Traitor's Kisses
Julia by Otto De Kat
I am throwing down the gauntlet and calling shenanigans on the endless deluge of Holocaust fiction that follows the same narrative trajectory: guy falls for girl, evil Nazi regime drives guy and girl apart, guy looks back as an old man wondering what happened, guy finds out by some strange coincidence that girl was actually spy/resistance fighter/heroine and had to sacrifice her true love for the greater good. Sure, Julia is a lovely example of this story, but seriously folks...
3 Out Of 5 Coded Letters
Donnybrook by Frank Bill
If you can get through the depraved brutality of the first three pages of this novel, you're doing well. Persevere and you're in for one hell of a bourbon-fuelled clusterfuck of violence. Set in the lead-up to a three-day bare knuckle tournament, Donnybrook follows a cast of the most insane, unlikeable, desperate gutter dwellers as they double, triple and quadruple cross one another for the love of drugs and money. It ain't subtle, but it's pretty darn fun.
3.5 Out Of 5 Speedballs
Joseph Walser's Machine by Goncalo M. Tavares
I'm not sure of the order in which Tavares's Kingdom series is supposed to be read, but this is my second of the four (of which only three are available in translation). Jerusalem was a great spin on noir, not to mention a cool iteration of Soul Asylum's best song, String Of Pearls, but it pales next to the brilliance of Joseph Walser's Machine. The more I read of him, the more Tavares reminds me of Georges Perec with his constant innovation and experimentation, albeit without the wacky impenetrability. JSM is a perplexing riff on the concept of routine, with Tavares throwing slight changes to the perfectly ordered world that Walser - an archetypal pathetic functionary - has constructed for himself. Tavares's point is clear - routine destroys the human soul. Having experienced this wonderful little novel, I'm inclined to agree.
4.5 Out Of 5 Closely Watched Clocks
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Is it just me or are we drowning in heavily workshopped, MFA-spawned, middle-American, slice of Jewish family life novels? At the risk of being sniped from crystal palaces, I'm just going to go ahead and say that I've stopped caring about these semi-dysfunctional families and their first world problems. Attenberg brings an interesting structural spin to The Middlesteins - the chapters follow the weight gain of the morbidly obese matriarch Edie and the resulting familial disintegration - but this could be any of a number of recent works from the Critically Approved Literature factory. It is a lovely book, to be sure, but at some point even the best attended circle jerk must come to an end.
3.5 Out of 5 Gilbert Grapes
The Bridge's Edge: The Sad End of Iain Banks
on Thursday, April 4, 2013
Ok, so I know what you're thinking. Here goes the bloody Bookworm again, whinging about an author he used to love but who has fallen from grace. Just another orgy of schedenfreude from a cranky lit-snob. And while you may be right that I have been disappointed by the last few novels from Iain Banks (at least the non-scifi ones), I'm not here to kneecap him for it. Rather, I want to share a few thoughts on my former favourite author, and long time member of the DEAR list, who has just announced that his forthcoming novel, The Quarry, will be his last as he has been diagnosed with late-stage inoperable gall-bladder cancer. Far be it from me to eulogise someone before they die, but I think Banks's announcement deserves a little reflection.
Back in my university days, I held two books up as my favourites of all time. They remains so - The Trial by Franz Kafka and I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier. To me, those two books manipulated my sense of reality and confidence in both narrator and narrative more than anything I had encountered before or since. I made it my number one university quest (as opposed to say, studying or attending lectures) to find more works that could truly cause my brain to melt in blissful despair. I tried Calvino. I tried Ballard. I tried Vonnegut. Loved them all, too. Yet none of them quite fried the grey matter like Kafka or Cormier. Then my friend Ariel handed me a book that he thought might just do the trick. It was The Bridge by Iain Banks. Most people fawn over The Wasp Factory, he told me, but this is the one you have to read. I did. He was right. The Bridge remains up there in my holy trinity of mindblowing literature.
I devoured the rest of Banks's work and, while he seemed kind of hit and miss (hits: Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, Complicity, Feersum Endjinn, The Crow Road; misses: Espedair Street, Canal Dreams), I began to await each new book with embarrassing excitement. I never really got into the Culture novels (or pretty much any of the ones he put out as Iain M. Banks) because I don't read much science fiction, but I am told the world he has created is one of the best ever.
Then came Whit, which I saw as the beginning of his creative end. The novels that followed were also patchy, but the best among them were barely as good as his previous misses. A couple, I would go so far to say, were atrocious (I'm looking at you The Steep Approach To Garbadale and Stonemouth). Yet I have never given up. Iain Banks is responsible just as much as Kafka or Cormier for shaping the way I read and write. Along with the announcement of his illness, Banks spoke of his next and last novel, The Quarry. It seems promising, if not a return to form. I honestly hope that it is great; that he goes out with a massive bang. It is the very least he deserves. His will be a tragic loss for me and the world of literature.
Back in my university days, I held two books up as my favourites of all time. They remains so - The Trial by Franz Kafka and I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier. To me, those two books manipulated my sense of reality and confidence in both narrator and narrative more than anything I had encountered before or since. I made it my number one university quest (as opposed to say, studying or attending lectures) to find more works that could truly cause my brain to melt in blissful despair. I tried Calvino. I tried Ballard. I tried Vonnegut. Loved them all, too. Yet none of them quite fried the grey matter like Kafka or Cormier. Then my friend Ariel handed me a book that he thought might just do the trick. It was The Bridge by Iain Banks. Most people fawn over The Wasp Factory, he told me, but this is the one you have to read. I did. He was right. The Bridge remains up there in my holy trinity of mindblowing literature.
I devoured the rest of Banks's work and, while he seemed kind of hit and miss (hits: Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, Complicity, Feersum Endjinn, The Crow Road; misses: Espedair Street, Canal Dreams), I began to await each new book with embarrassing excitement. I never really got into the Culture novels (or pretty much any of the ones he put out as Iain M. Banks) because I don't read much science fiction, but I am told the world he has created is one of the best ever.
Then came Whit, which I saw as the beginning of his creative end. The novels that followed were also patchy, but the best among them were barely as good as his previous misses. A couple, I would go so far to say, were atrocious (I'm looking at you The Steep Approach To Garbadale and Stonemouth). Yet I have never given up. Iain Banks is responsible just as much as Kafka or Cormier for shaping the way I read and write. Along with the announcement of his illness, Banks spoke of his next and last novel, The Quarry. It seems promising, if not a return to form. I honestly hope that it is great; that he goes out with a massive bang. It is the very least he deserves. His will be a tragic loss for me and the world of literature.
The Decline Of The Patriarch
on Saturday, July 7, 2012
Having watched the sad decline of some beautiful minds first hand, I was dismayed to read today that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winning pioneer of the magical realist movement and author of a couple of my favourite novels (No-one Writes To The Colonel, The Autumn of The Patriarch) is now suffering from the late stages of dementia. According to his brother Jaime, Gabriel is doing well but experiences frequent memory lapses.
Speaking at the Inquisition Museum in Cartagena, Jaime said, "Dementia runs in our family and he's now suffering the ravages prematurely due to the cancer that put him almost on the verge of death... Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defences and cells and accelerated the process."
That Marquez had the condition was hardly a secret. Writers don't just 'retire' for no good reason. Nevertheless, his legion of fans have continued to cling to the hope that they might still see some more books before Marquez dropped off the scene altogether. That doesn't seem to be on the cards anymore. Asked about the next two instalments of his autobiography (the first being 2002's Living To Tell The Tale), Jaime said, "Unfortunately, I don't think that'll be possible, but I hope I'm wrong."
Looks like it will be a sad, quiet end to the Patriarch.
Speaking at the Inquisition Museum in Cartagena, Jaime said, "Dementia runs in our family and he's now suffering the ravages prematurely due to the cancer that put him almost on the verge of death... Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defences and cells and accelerated the process."
That Marquez had the condition was hardly a secret. Writers don't just 'retire' for no good reason. Nevertheless, his legion of fans have continued to cling to the hope that they might still see some more books before Marquez dropped off the scene altogether. That doesn't seem to be on the cards anymore. Asked about the next two instalments of his autobiography (the first being 2002's Living To Tell The Tale), Jaime said, "Unfortunately, I don't think that'll be possible, but I hope I'm wrong."
Looks like it will be a sad, quiet end to the Patriarch.
Microviews 15: Vann, Rhodes, Binet
on Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Still hiding in a dank corner attempting to be productive, but the pull of enticing literary treats has drawn me out once again and forced, yes forced, me to show my face back here for a minute.
Dirt by David Vann
It is a testament to just how high on the DEAR list David Vann has risen, that I dropped two other books I was reading - one of which was by a lesser (arguably former) DEAR author - the moment Dirt arrived in my mailbox. Comparisons are often made with Cormac McCarthy and while they might have rung true for his first two books, Dirt owes more to William Golding or JG Ballard than the literary Lone Ranger. Opening with the most sexually-tense, oddly-erotic series of incest scenes I think I've ever read, it follows young mama's boy Galen in his search for deep transcendence (with some help from Herman Hesse and Richard Bach) on a remote Californian walnut farm. The first third of the book is taken up with the strained relationship between Galen, his mother, aunt, cousin and rapidly-deteriorating grandmother. When the family head up to a cabin for some family time (read: to confront their demons), the entire structure falls apart. Galen gets his wish of bedding young Jennifer, but it is to predictably catastrophic ends. For the rest of the book it is just Galen and his mother in slow, torturous decline. Having threatened to report Galen to the police for statutory rape, the mother is locked in the farm shed and essentially left to die while Galen goes all primal, rubbing himself in dirt and destroying all the family mementos. As she fades, he finds transcendence. Needless to say, Dirt is a disturbing, often callous book. And while it does not quite reach the heights of Vann's previous work it is still an excellent read by a bona fide "One To Watch".
This Is Life by Dan Rhodes
Ever since I first read Timoleon Vieta Come Home, I've had a major soft spot for Dan Rhodes. Consistently funny and seriously warped, he has continued to deliver without ever really writing a "conventional" novel. Until now. This Is Life is a meditation on the wankiness of art, much like Kevin Wilson's wonderful 2011 novel, The Family Fang. But whereas Wilson's book dealt with a series of absurd performance pieces perpetrated by parents on their poor kids, this centres around one act - a totally shaved man called The Machine shitting on stage. To be fair that isn't Rhodes's whole schtick here; the main narrative concerns Aurelie, a young art student left caring for a baby after accidentally hitting it in the face with a rock. As her final school project she had planned to throw said rock in the air and then follow whoever it hit for a week to document their life. When it hits the kid, its mother foists it in her hand and says she is now responsible for its welfare. Implausible, sure, but a fun setup for the ensuing hijinks. A number of other absurd threads are woven in to the story and, as one might predict, coincidence piles upon coincidence until they are all drawn together. Many have compared this book to the film Amelie and it is not hard to see why. It too raises a glass in celebration of serendipity. And it is almost cringe-worthily cute. Thank the literary gods for the guy shitting on stage or I'd be knee deep in saccharine puke. Despite its general cutesiness, and even though it doesn't possess the delicious nastiness of Rhodes's last book Little Hands Clapping, This Is Life is still wonderful.
HHhH by Laurent Binet
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is one of the great resistance stories of the Second World War - a team of parachutists dropped in to occupied Prague with a mission to kill Hitler's favourite, most vicious lapdog; a comedy of errors leading to the botching of the attack; the fluke death of the target due to blood poisoning; and the remarkable, heroic siege in the crypt of the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius where a handful of resistance fighters held off swarms of Nazis before opting to take their own lives before falling into enemy hands. In his Prix Goncourt-winning debut, Binet doesn't just recount the story but attempts something far more ambitious - he tackles the whole question of writing historical fiction, asking what limits fidelity to history must necessarily place on a writer's imagination. The result is a complex, troubling work that I'm not certain quite succeeds but is well worth your attention anyway. Binet intersperses the assassination narrative with personal asides, reflections and anecdotes about the writing process and his struggle with the material. Throughout he is firing on all cylinders, often taking nasty swipes at others who have undertaken similar tasks (a particularly humorous broadside is saved for fellow Prix Goncourt winner Jonathan Littel). To his credit he saves some of his harshest criticism for himself, attacking many of his own devices. All this makes for a compelling, albeit disjointed read. I never quite got swept up in the story of Kubis and Gabcik because Binet's absolute adherence to verifiable historical evidence doesn't allow him to flesh them (and most of the other major players) out as characters. Furthermore, I was troubled with his calling the book a "novel" when it was more the literary equivalent of a documentary with the director's commentary switched on. Presenting strict historical fact as fiction poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which is setting a precedent for others to do likewise and, in the foreseeable future, make fact and fiction indistinguishable. That said, HHhH remains an important book; one that ought to be read and discussed in detail.
Dirt by David Vann
It is a testament to just how high on the DEAR list David Vann has risen, that I dropped two other books I was reading - one of which was by a lesser (arguably former) DEAR author - the moment Dirt arrived in my mailbox. Comparisons are often made with Cormac McCarthy and while they might have rung true for his first two books, Dirt owes more to William Golding or JG Ballard than the literary Lone Ranger. Opening with the most sexually-tense, oddly-erotic series of incest scenes I think I've ever read, it follows young mama's boy Galen in his search for deep transcendence (with some help from Herman Hesse and Richard Bach) on a remote Californian walnut farm. The first third of the book is taken up with the strained relationship between Galen, his mother, aunt, cousin and rapidly-deteriorating grandmother. When the family head up to a cabin for some family time (read: to confront their demons), the entire structure falls apart. Galen gets his wish of bedding young Jennifer, but it is to predictably catastrophic ends. For the rest of the book it is just Galen and his mother in slow, torturous decline. Having threatened to report Galen to the police for statutory rape, the mother is locked in the farm shed and essentially left to die while Galen goes all primal, rubbing himself in dirt and destroying all the family mementos. As she fades, he finds transcendence. Needless to say, Dirt is a disturbing, often callous book. And while it does not quite reach the heights of Vann's previous work it is still an excellent read by a bona fide "One To Watch".
This Is Life by Dan Rhodes
Ever since I first read Timoleon Vieta Come Home, I've had a major soft spot for Dan Rhodes. Consistently funny and seriously warped, he has continued to deliver without ever really writing a "conventional" novel. Until now. This Is Life is a meditation on the wankiness of art, much like Kevin Wilson's wonderful 2011 novel, The Family Fang. But whereas Wilson's book dealt with a series of absurd performance pieces perpetrated by parents on their poor kids, this centres around one act - a totally shaved man called The Machine shitting on stage. To be fair that isn't Rhodes's whole schtick here; the main narrative concerns Aurelie, a young art student left caring for a baby after accidentally hitting it in the face with a rock. As her final school project she had planned to throw said rock in the air and then follow whoever it hit for a week to document their life. When it hits the kid, its mother foists it in her hand and says she is now responsible for its welfare. Implausible, sure, but a fun setup for the ensuing hijinks. A number of other absurd threads are woven in to the story and, as one might predict, coincidence piles upon coincidence until they are all drawn together. Many have compared this book to the film Amelie and it is not hard to see why. It too raises a glass in celebration of serendipity. And it is almost cringe-worthily cute. Thank the literary gods for the guy shitting on stage or I'd be knee deep in saccharine puke. Despite its general cutesiness, and even though it doesn't possess the delicious nastiness of Rhodes's last book Little Hands Clapping, This Is Life is still wonderful.
HHhH by Laurent Binet
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is one of the great resistance stories of the Second World War - a team of parachutists dropped in to occupied Prague with a mission to kill Hitler's favourite, most vicious lapdog; a comedy of errors leading to the botching of the attack; the fluke death of the target due to blood poisoning; and the remarkable, heroic siege in the crypt of the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius where a handful of resistance fighters held off swarms of Nazis before opting to take their own lives before falling into enemy hands. In his Prix Goncourt-winning debut, Binet doesn't just recount the story but attempts something far more ambitious - he tackles the whole question of writing historical fiction, asking what limits fidelity to history must necessarily place on a writer's imagination. The result is a complex, troubling work that I'm not certain quite succeeds but is well worth your attention anyway. Binet intersperses the assassination narrative with personal asides, reflections and anecdotes about the writing process and his struggle with the material. Throughout he is firing on all cylinders, often taking nasty swipes at others who have undertaken similar tasks (a particularly humorous broadside is saved for fellow Prix Goncourt winner Jonathan Littel). To his credit he saves some of his harshest criticism for himself, attacking many of his own devices. All this makes for a compelling, albeit disjointed read. I never quite got swept up in the story of Kubis and Gabcik because Binet's absolute adherence to verifiable historical evidence doesn't allow him to flesh them (and most of the other major players) out as characters. Furthermore, I was troubled with his calling the book a "novel" when it was more the literary equivalent of a documentary with the director's commentary switched on. Presenting strict historical fact as fiction poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which is setting a precedent for others to do likewise and, in the foreseeable future, make fact and fiction indistinguishable. That said, HHhH remains an important book; one that ought to be read and discussed in detail.
The Collapse of The World Banks (or Why I'm Giving Up On Love)
on Thursday, January 26, 2012
At what point is it okay to give up on your once favourite authors?
So I was catching up on my backlog of book podcasts yesterday afternoon when I heard that Iain Banks has a new novel called Stonemouth coming out in April. I should, in theory, be very excited. Back in my early university days a friend gave me a copy of The Bridge, promising that it would provide the adult version of the mindfuck experience I had felt with I Am The Cheese. Same sense of discomfort, he said. Same paranoia. Same need to question everything. He was right and to this day The Bridge remains one of my favorutie books. As soon as I had finished it I hunted down every other Banks novel I could find. The Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, The Crow Road, Complicity. Loved them all. I even dabbled in his hard science fiction stuff, with particular props to the awesome Feersum Endjinn. That's not to say there weren't the odd misses too. Espedair Street is embarrassingly bad. Canal Dreams is only average.
Once I had ploughed through them all, I began to anticipate his next release. Which is about when he began to lose it. Whit was quirky but hardly satisfying. Song of Stone promised something of a return to form but didn't quite deliver. Ditto The Business. Then came the book that had to go down as his worst so far - Dead Air - but I forgave him because any number of great novelists were publishing confused crap, trying to grapple with the September 11 attacks. Like any good fanboy, I wrote off the loss and waited once again with baited breath. Five years later The Steep Approach To Garbadale appeared and proved not only unworthy of the wait, but even worse than its predecessor. Wow that book was awful. Transition, released fairly soon afterwards, was slightly better but, after three bad books in a row, I had to concede that Banks might finally have fallen off my DEAR list.
I'm not sure how to feel about Stonemouth. The conditioned response in me is to get excited. The rational reaction is indifference. Perhaps even annoyance. But then I think of Andrew Miller. Having loved his debut Ingenious Pain, I suffered through the next four books and was ready to give up on him when he pulled out last year's magnificent novel Pure. Maybe Banks will work a similar miracle. If Stonemouth turns out to be as awful as I'm expecting I think I will finally have to give up on him altogether. Until the next book, that is. Pavlov's dog folks. Pavlov's dog.
So I was catching up on my backlog of book podcasts yesterday afternoon when I heard that Iain Banks has a new novel called Stonemouth coming out in April. I should, in theory, be very excited. Back in my early university days a friend gave me a copy of The Bridge, promising that it would provide the adult version of the mindfuck experience I had felt with I Am The Cheese. Same sense of discomfort, he said. Same paranoia. Same need to question everything. He was right and to this day The Bridge remains one of my favorutie books. As soon as I had finished it I hunted down every other Banks novel I could find. The Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass, The Crow Road, Complicity. Loved them all. I even dabbled in his hard science fiction stuff, with particular props to the awesome Feersum Endjinn. That's not to say there weren't the odd misses too. Espedair Street is embarrassingly bad. Canal Dreams is only average.
Once I had ploughed through them all, I began to anticipate his next release. Which is about when he began to lose it. Whit was quirky but hardly satisfying. Song of Stone promised something of a return to form but didn't quite deliver. Ditto The Business. Then came the book that had to go down as his worst so far - Dead Air - but I forgave him because any number of great novelists were publishing confused crap, trying to grapple with the September 11 attacks. Like any good fanboy, I wrote off the loss and waited once again with baited breath. Five years later The Steep Approach To Garbadale appeared and proved not only unworthy of the wait, but even worse than its predecessor. Wow that book was awful. Transition, released fairly soon afterwards, was slightly better but, after three bad books in a row, I had to concede that Banks might finally have fallen off my DEAR list.
I'm not sure how to feel about Stonemouth. The conditioned response in me is to get excited. The rational reaction is indifference. Perhaps even annoyance. But then I think of Andrew Miller. Having loved his debut Ingenious Pain, I suffered through the next four books and was ready to give up on him when he pulled out last year's magnificent novel Pure. Maybe Banks will work a similar miracle. If Stonemouth turns out to be as awful as I'm expecting I think I will finally have to give up on him altogether. Until the next book, that is. Pavlov's dog folks. Pavlov's dog.
Premium Drafts: On Publishing Discarded Or Otherwise Unfinished Works
on Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Legend has it that my favourite book of all time never got past the drafting stage. Truth is, there's no way to know how close to completion Franz Kafka's The Trial actually was but I suspect that it was much further down the track than Max Brod would have had us believe. Same goes for David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, irrespective of the hoo-ha that accompanied its release earlier this year. The only thing that monolith lacked was a good edit. Either way, at least both of those books can be read as entire works which is more than can be said for 2009's publishing sensation (read: fraud), The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov; a few cue cards, beautifully presented but ultimately inconsequential. Nabokov would have choked on a butterfly had he known his jumbled thoughts would see the light of day.
The publication of unfinished works is hardly new, but for some reason we seem to currently be drowning in a sea of offcuts. Even as I write, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Narrative of John Smith, written before the appearance of Sherlock Holmes, is hitting bookstore shelves worldwide. So what's with this deluge of (for the most part) dross? Perhaps it is a crass money-grabbing exercise by publishers who are reluctant to invest in new talent at a time when the book market is in such an extreme state of flux. Maybe demand is dictating supply; readers are simply desperate for words from the grave by authors they know and love. Or maybe it is a toast to a disappearing process; we read abandoned drafts because, thanks to the scourge of technology (and yes I appreciate the irony of bitching about it on a blog), 'drafts' as such are likely to become a thing of the past. Most likely it's a combination of all these. And more.
Having read a fair number of these 'newly discovered' drafts I can safely say that very few do anything to further the names of their authors. There is, however, one wonderful exception and, not surprisingly, it comes from one of the most exciting small publishing houses in business today. Without fanfare, Other Press has just put out Two Friends by Alberto Moravia. Regular readers would know how much I love Italy's post-war litgod. Yep, I'd read pretty much anything with his name on it. Thankfully, Two Friends is more than the preliminary scribblings of a great mind. Indeed, what makes it particularly enticing is that it was written (and abandoned) between my two favourite Moravia novels, The Conformist (1951) and Contempt (1954) and not only shows the development of his political thinking but does so three times over. You see, Two Friends isn't just one draft. It is three. Each with significant differences - in perspective, outcome and emphasis. The central question, however, is the same: to what extent will an individual compromise their personal morality to the greater cause? Sergio desperately wants to convince his rich friend Maurizio to join the Communist Party. Maurizio isn't the slightest bit interested but seizes the opportunity to play with Sergio's heart and test his conviction by offering an indecent proposal. He will join the party if, and only if, Sergio can convince his beautiful, loyal girlfriend to sleep with his him.
All three versions have their strengths, but it is the second that really shines. Taken on its own, it would have made a creditable addition to the Moravia canon. It is therefore intriguing to think that Moravia went on to discard many of its strongest aspects in draft three before ultimately giving up altogether. Reading this book in its entirety provides a prescient warning for budding authors: keep your drafts because sometimes it takes failed progress to appreciate what you already have. I hope other publishers now learn from Other Press's example and only publish unfinished works for which there are multiple drafts. Cobbling together a "final product" does the writer a disservice. There is, after all, a reason the thing was abandoned. However, exposing the entire process gives the reader a remarkable insight into the literary mind. Plus it doesn't hurt to be reminded that our heroes don't just click their fingers and have a masterpiece appear.
The publication of unfinished works is hardly new, but for some reason we seem to currently be drowning in a sea of offcuts. Even as I write, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Narrative of John Smith, written before the appearance of Sherlock Holmes, is hitting bookstore shelves worldwide. So what's with this deluge of (for the most part) dross? Perhaps it is a crass money-grabbing exercise by publishers who are reluctant to invest in new talent at a time when the book market is in such an extreme state of flux. Maybe demand is dictating supply; readers are simply desperate for words from the grave by authors they know and love. Or maybe it is a toast to a disappearing process; we read abandoned drafts because, thanks to the scourge of technology (and yes I appreciate the irony of bitching about it on a blog), 'drafts' as such are likely to become a thing of the past. Most likely it's a combination of all these. And more.
Having read a fair number of these 'newly discovered' drafts I can safely say that very few do anything to further the names of their authors. There is, however, one wonderful exception and, not surprisingly, it comes from one of the most exciting small publishing houses in business today. Without fanfare, Other Press has just put out Two Friends by Alberto Moravia. Regular readers would know how much I love Italy's post-war litgod. Yep, I'd read pretty much anything with his name on it. Thankfully, Two Friends is more than the preliminary scribblings of a great mind. Indeed, what makes it particularly enticing is that it was written (and abandoned) between my two favourite Moravia novels, The Conformist (1951) and Contempt (1954) and not only shows the development of his political thinking but does so three times over. You see, Two Friends isn't just one draft. It is three. Each with significant differences - in perspective, outcome and emphasis. The central question, however, is the same: to what extent will an individual compromise their personal morality to the greater cause? Sergio desperately wants to convince his rich friend Maurizio to join the Communist Party. Maurizio isn't the slightest bit interested but seizes the opportunity to play with Sergio's heart and test his conviction by offering an indecent proposal. He will join the party if, and only if, Sergio can convince his beautiful, loyal girlfriend to sleep with his him.
All three versions have their strengths, but it is the second that really shines. Taken on its own, it would have made a creditable addition to the Moravia canon. It is therefore intriguing to think that Moravia went on to discard many of its strongest aspects in draft three before ultimately giving up altogether. Reading this book in its entirety provides a prescient warning for budding authors: keep your drafts because sometimes it takes failed progress to appreciate what you already have. I hope other publishers now learn from Other Press's example and only publish unfinished works for which there are multiple drafts. Cobbling together a "final product" does the writer a disservice. There is, after all, a reason the thing was abandoned. However, exposing the entire process gives the reader a remarkable insight into the literary mind. Plus it doesn't hurt to be reminded that our heroes don't just click their fingers and have a masterpiece appear.
Microviews Vol. 14: Kaufman, Wilson, Tyszka
on Friday, October 28, 2011
Somehow I read a couple of happy books. How unlike me. At least I rounded it off with a suitably morose offering. So here you go litnerds; moderate your mood with one of these:
The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman
Andrew Kaufman's geektastic debut All My Friends Are Superheroes is one of those books I like to dip back into whenever I need an emotional power-up. I first bought it on a whim. I'd never heard of the author or the book. But the title spoke to my costume wearing primary school self and to this day it remains one of the most charming, funny and heartwarming little books I've ever read. Now Kaufman is back with another novella that, while not quite as great as Superheroes, has nevertheless cemented his place on my DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) list. Kicking off with the weirdest bank robbery in history - the thief, dressed something like the Scarlet Pimpernel, demands everyone's most personal sentimental item - it follows each of the victims as increasingly absurd things begin to happen in their lives. Tattoos come to life, babies shit money and the protagonist's wife begins to shrink. Imperceptably at first, then faster until she becomes the size of a thimble. The Tiny Wife is a bit more straightforward than Superheroes (it is essentially a meditation on marital discord) but Kaufman still manages to splash enough moments of pure imaginative wonder throughout its eighty-five pages to make it another useful antidote to the daily doldrums.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
The Family Fang had me at the binding. Not quite hardcover, not quite paperback, it is a format with which I can see myself becoming strangely obsessed. Then there's the cover artwork - a mix of Monty Python lettering and late-period Saramago cartoon characters. Win. So what about the book itself? The Family Fang is pretty much a primer on how to totally fuck up your kids. Camille and Caleb Fang are 'performance artists'; their art is the creation of chaos in everyday environments - elaborate, absurd practical jokes. Their kids, A (Annie) and B (Buster) are essential props in each stunt. The story jumps back and forth between descriptions of their various pranks, and the adult lives of the two kids. Annie has become an Academy Award nominated actress, prone to scandal and self-destruction. Buster is a flash-in-the-pan literary star, relegated to playing video games while he struggles with his next novel. The two are drawn back to the Fang world when their respective careers tank. But going home to mum and dad ends in disaster when Camille and Caleb disappear, suspected victims of a serial killer. Has the unthinkable truly happened or is this just another elaborate hoax, the great swansong of the Fang family? Like most comic novels, Wilson struggles to sustain the laughs, but he fills the void with large dollops of empathy and pathos. And while it doesn't quite deliver on what it first promises, The Family Fang was still one of the kindest-hearted, totally loopy books I've read this year.
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka
There is a certain skill in being able to unnerve a reader. Ian McEwan has it down pat. So does Patrick McGrath. And then there's all those Eastern European creep-masters: Meyrink, Ungar, Walser et al. For the first half of The Sickness, I though Alberto Tyszka had joined the gang. Alas, this tale of cancer and stalking resolved so unsatisfactorily that I was left shaking my head at the waste of a brilliant setup. The Sickness is, above all else, a family tragedy; the story of a doctor who finds an aggressive brain tumour on his father's scan and struggles to find a way to break the news. Had the book just followed this line, it would have been perfectly beautiful, if very sad. However, Tyszka weaves a subplot of an obsessive hypochondriac patient, Ernesto Duran, who reacts angrily to Dr. Miranda's brush offs, until the doctor's secretary takes it upon herself to answer on his behalf. The email correspondence starts off genuinely discomforting. For a few moments it is even scary. But Tyszka does nothing with it - there is no confrontation, no crescendo. Duran just fades away. As did my interest in the ending, no matter how poignant it might objectively have been. So very, very disappointing.
The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman
Andrew Kaufman's geektastic debut All My Friends Are Superheroes is one of those books I like to dip back into whenever I need an emotional power-up. I first bought it on a whim. I'd never heard of the author or the book. But the title spoke to my costume wearing primary school self and to this day it remains one of the most charming, funny and heartwarming little books I've ever read. Now Kaufman is back with another novella that, while not quite as great as Superheroes, has nevertheless cemented his place on my DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) list. Kicking off with the weirdest bank robbery in history - the thief, dressed something like the Scarlet Pimpernel, demands everyone's most personal sentimental item - it follows each of the victims as increasingly absurd things begin to happen in their lives. Tattoos come to life, babies shit money and the protagonist's wife begins to shrink. Imperceptably at first, then faster until she becomes the size of a thimble. The Tiny Wife is a bit more straightforward than Superheroes (it is essentially a meditation on marital discord) but Kaufman still manages to splash enough moments of pure imaginative wonder throughout its eighty-five pages to make it another useful antidote to the daily doldrums.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
The Family Fang had me at the binding. Not quite hardcover, not quite paperback, it is a format with which I can see myself becoming strangely obsessed. Then there's the cover artwork - a mix of Monty Python lettering and late-period Saramago cartoon characters. Win. So what about the book itself? The Family Fang is pretty much a primer on how to totally fuck up your kids. Camille and Caleb Fang are 'performance artists'; their art is the creation of chaos in everyday environments - elaborate, absurd practical jokes. Their kids, A (Annie) and B (Buster) are essential props in each stunt. The story jumps back and forth between descriptions of their various pranks, and the adult lives of the two kids. Annie has become an Academy Award nominated actress, prone to scandal and self-destruction. Buster is a flash-in-the-pan literary star, relegated to playing video games while he struggles with his next novel. The two are drawn back to the Fang world when their respective careers tank. But going home to mum and dad ends in disaster when Camille and Caleb disappear, suspected victims of a serial killer. Has the unthinkable truly happened or is this just another elaborate hoax, the great swansong of the Fang family? Like most comic novels, Wilson struggles to sustain the laughs, but he fills the void with large dollops of empathy and pathos. And while it doesn't quite deliver on what it first promises, The Family Fang was still one of the kindest-hearted, totally loopy books I've read this year.
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka
There is a certain skill in being able to unnerve a reader. Ian McEwan has it down pat. So does Patrick McGrath. And then there's all those Eastern European creep-masters: Meyrink, Ungar, Walser et al. For the first half of The Sickness, I though Alberto Tyszka had joined the gang. Alas, this tale of cancer and stalking resolved so unsatisfactorily that I was left shaking my head at the waste of a brilliant setup. The Sickness is, above all else, a family tragedy; the story of a doctor who finds an aggressive brain tumour on his father's scan and struggles to find a way to break the news. Had the book just followed this line, it would have been perfectly beautiful, if very sad. However, Tyszka weaves a subplot of an obsessive hypochondriac patient, Ernesto Duran, who reacts angrily to Dr. Miranda's brush offs, until the doctor's secretary takes it upon herself to answer on his behalf. The email correspondence starts off genuinely discomforting. For a few moments it is even scary. But Tyszka does nothing with it - there is no confrontation, no crescendo. Duran just fades away. As did my interest in the ending, no matter how poignant it might objectively have been. So very, very disappointing.
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