Microviews Vol. 43: Murder, Mephistopheles and Michael Jackson

Murder in Mississippi by John Safran
Spare a thought for the unfortunate kebab at the pointy end of a John Safran TV skewering. Life in the wake of having your idiocy/bigotry/ineptitude unveiled like that must be quite the burden. However, for white supremacist nutjob extraordinaire, Richard Barrett, TV exposure was the least of his problems. Soon after Safran's prank - which, incidentally, never actually went to air - Barrett up and got himself murdered. By a black guy. In rather homoerotic circumstances. Not quite the Confederate flag end he'd envisaged, methinks. Murder In Mississippi sees Safran return to the scene of the crime in an attempt to make sense of this very peculiar death. Believe the hype and it's a modern day In Cold Blood, but Safran is no Capote and the killer, Vincent McGee, is certainly no Dick Hickock or Perry Smith. That's a good thing, though. If this was mere homage it wouldn't be half as interesting. Safran is in a position that Capote could only have dreamed of - not only does he get to know the murderer but he also knew the victim. That Safran is an outsider - pasty, Australian, Jewish with a grating lisp that you won't be able to get out of your head as you read - allows him the kind of objectivity that even his most desperate attempts to insert himself into the narrative cannot diminish. As usual, he is an idiosyncratic joy. It's hard not to love his bumbling attempts to ingratiate himself with the various major players (several of whom have still not forgiven him for the original TV prank), the way he plays and is played in equal measure or the moments of childlike wonder and realisation that only he could bring to this kind of enterprise. And while Safran may not reach the most fulfilling of conclusions, the journey makes for a fascinating exploration of masculinity, Southern social fragility and the very strange machinations of the American criminal justice system.
4 Out of 5 Green Dot Cards

A Beautiful Truth by Colin McAdam
Several chapters into A Beautiful Truth I was reminded of that case a couple of years ago where some woman had her face ripped off by her friend's pet chimpanzee. Then my mind wandered across to Michael Jackson and his tragic chimp, Bubbles. Point being, it's never a good idea to keep a chimp as a pet. One way or another, one of you is going to get run over by a tractor. So too here - a passable mishmash of simian sociology, political commentary and good ol' soppy sentimentality that never quite strikes the right balance - I could feel those monster wheels rolling back and forth throughout. The chapters later in the book when the hand-raised pet is given to a research facility are powerful, but it washes over quickly. I get it. We're all the same. Be nice to animals. And stay away from Michael Jackson.
2.5 Out of 5 Tick Pickers

Youth Without God by Odon Von Horvath
In what might have made a pretty decent Marx Brothers moment, Odon Von Horvath was killed in Paris when a tree under which he was hiding was hit by lightning, causing a large branch to fall directly on his head. To add ironic insult to fatal injury, he was only in France because he had fled Austria after the Anschluss to escape likely persecution (if not murder) by the Nazis. And so it is that his death has eclipsed his work, which is a shame really because Youth Without God is a marvellous little book. A fierce interrogation of minor rebellion against a totalitarian state, it centres around an unassuming schoolteacher suddenly thrown into the thick of it when he reprimands a student for a racist comment. Labeled a traitor and cast aside, things only get worse when he is implicated in a murder. Youth Without God is a sharp and unforgiving little book. There's a slight whiff of redemption towards the end but it is little consolation for the branch Horvath has already dropped on your head.
4 Out of 5 Goose Steps

The Facades by Eric Lundgren
Molly Svenson was Trude's most celebrated mezzo-soprano until one night, after a performance, she just vanished. Now her poor husband Sven is left zipping around the city in a desperate attempt to find her. The police aren't really getting anywhere, friends aren't being particularly helpful, and their dropkick son has fallen under the sway of a ridiculous cult. It's all very disjointed and unsettling, which is exactly the point. This is a book about displacement, full of absurdities and comic flourishes, where nothing is quite as it seems. Trude itself is a masterful creation - a labyrinth conceived by a mad architect who wanted the city to function as some kind of grand puzzle. It's a shame, then, that Lundgren runs out of steam towards the end. The denouement is a letdown and, while you might be sad to leave Trude, you'll have stopped caring about that neurotic whinger Sven.
3.5 Out of 5 Curious Incidents

The Implacable Order Of Things by Jose Luis Peixoto
Twins joined at the finger, giants, wise centenarians, cuckolded shephards and even the devil himself populate a remote European village in this dark fable of love and longing, revenge and philosophical ponderings. Jose Saramago rated it (and, let's not forget, the belicose Nobelian rated my favourite find of the year, Carlos M. Tavares). And that title... what a ripper! Alack, alack, I just couldn't connect. I so wanted to love The Implacable Order Of Things. The devil knows I tried. But there was a certain coldness that made my bits shrivel up any time I tried to get close. I'm sure Peixoto is capable of great things - his imagination is a garden of delights. If only, like the old Tin Man of yore, he had a heart.
3 Out Of 5 Linked Pinkies

Microviews Vol. 12: Saramago, Birch, Antunes

Cain by Jose Saramago

So remember how, a couple of years before he died, Saramago managed to right royally piss everyone off one last time while being interviewed about his most recent book? The epithets flew thick and fast: heretic, anti-semite, nasty pastie (ok, so I sort of made that last one up, but it was one of my favourites from my schoolyard days). Anyway, two years on and Cain is finally available in English so we who partook of the mudslinging can get a better feel for what all the fuss was about. And damnit if I don't find myself kind of regretting having said the things I did.

There is a beautifully poetic symmetry in the fact that the last book Portugal's great curmudgeon (and Nobel Laureate) wrote was a 'revised' take on the first book ever written - The Old Testament. And in true Saramago form, he didn't exactly use the exercise to make peace with his maker so much as pick a fight in advance of meeting him. Cain is a peculiar little book; playful, excoriating and chekily blasphemous. We all know the story of Cain and Abel, but Saramago uses the first murderer's subsequent immortality as a device to explore the nature of God's working throughout the remainder of the bible. Destined to wander from place to place, Cain becomes a minor character in all the important biblical episodes. Whether stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac (Cain has to step in because the angel God had sent had a mechanical wing malfunction), shacking up with and impregnating Lilith, ploughing Job's fields as his boss is subjected to ever more horrible tortures, standing beneath Mount Sinai when God unleashes his fury against the Golden Calf idolators or just helping Lot and his family out of Sodom and Gemorah, Cain bears witness to a Lord who is anything but benevolent and forgiving. Saramago makes no apologies for forcing his message down your throat - God is brutal, has no conscience and quite willingly destroys lives (even of those who show him absolute devotion). Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book, however, is not the argument but what lies beneath. Saramago seems not to question God's existence. He exists, the author suggests, but he is unworthy of your devotion.

To my mind, Saramago was one of the few laureates not to suffer a post-Nobel slump. Stylistically, this is him at his very best, playing with time and space such that the flashes between episodes seem natural (they occur in what amounts to parallel universes), allowing the book to come full circle and end with one of Genesis's earliest stories, that of Noah and the ark. As the water subsides, Saramago has Cain, the immortal wandering Jew, finally get his showdown with God. It is an incredible scene, one that justifies the Quantum Leap stylings, and containing a punchline so perfectly ingenious that you can't help but feel that, in the lifelong battle Saramago waged with God, when all was said and done, it was the writer who had the last laugh.

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

Last time a boy mucked around with a tiger and got caught up in a shipwreck, it landed Yann Martel a Booker, so it is little surprise that the punters are buzzing about Carol Birch's latest offering. Dig a little deeper and the similarities don't exactly fade into the background. The shipwreck itself (which involves a bunch of sailors and a couple of pigs, but no unlikely furry friends) is supposedly based on the sinking of the Essex but bears a much more striking resemblance to the facts in the classic British case of Dudley and Stephens, itself the inspiration for the naming of the tiger in Life of Pi. Richard Parker, the lawyers amongst you may recall, was the boy who was eaten by his mates, and for whose murder the defendants pleaded necessity. A hundred and fifty years on and the precedent still stands (though, in the actual case, they failed and were hanged).

But don't get too sucked in by the spin. Birch's book isn't a philosophical slice of dreamy magical realism but, rather, a harsh adventure-cum-survival tale on the high seas. It takes a while to get moving, as little Jaffy Brown falls under the sway of Jamrach, a Faginesque trader of exotic animals, and is sent on a ship in search of some mythical dragon (which I gather is a komodo). He and his expedition mates do manage to snare one in the jungles of who-knows-where, but the token crazy guy releases it mid-way through the voyage home, the thing goes beserk and, voila, the ship sinks. Up to there it is a pretty stock standard seafaring adventure. However, once the ship is down and the survivors are left to float aimlessly for months on two lifeboats, the novel takes a deeper, darker turn.

Birch's depiction of starvation, elemental batterings, interpersonal conflict and just sheer desperation are brilliantly evocative and spectacularly painful to behold. It is sad and hopeless, increasingly debased and ultimately apocalyptic. Fantastic! Unfortunately, however, it is not enough to lift Jamrach's Menagerie above the first one hundred pages' narrative slump. But at least it redeemed my obsessive compulsive need to finish the thing. A decent book, but don't go slapping down your hard earned bucks at the local betting agency just yet.

The Land At The End Of The World by Antonio Lobo Antunes

Call me a cynic, but I find it difficult to view the republication of this Portuguese master's second novel as anything but cheap opportunism by a publisher keen to cash in on the rekindled fear of colonialism stirred up by the the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the very least it is a small act of political publishing protest aimed squarely in America's direction. Thankfully, The Land At The End Of The World is a staggering work of documentary fiction which well deserves to be introduced to a whole new generation of readers.

Based on the author's own experience as an army medic in Angola it is one of the bleakest anti-colonialism novels you are ever likely to encounter. Think Celine minus the virulent anti-Semitism, add an extra dollop of De Sade and you get the picture. Presented as an ongoing confession to a lover (or, quite possibly, a prostitute), it slides seamlessly between near pornographic fantasy and brutal descriptions of what the narrator has seen while on duty in "the arsehole of the world". Antunes stays on point throughout, keen to ram home his disdain for those anonymous politicians and generals who send young men off to die in the name of imperial expansion. The visceral descriptions of rotting corpses, war crimes and other indignities are unrelenting, as is the portrayal a man suffering the trauma of having witnessed (and perhaps perpetrated) these atrocities. The rationale behind publishing this of all Antunes's novels might be suspect, but its ongoing prescience and unadulterated power are most certainly not. Deeply disturbing, but a must read.

At Interval, A Death: Jose Saramago 1922 - 2010

Jose Saramago, the great porcupine of modern literature, has died and I'm not quite sure how to feel. I have written previously about my struggle to separate the man from his work. He was cantankerous, opinionated and, unfortunately, ill-informed on a number of issues with which he chose to so passionately engage. While I kind of admire the first two traits in a public intellectual (and in fact share his left leaning ways), the third produced some cringeworthy moments that peppered the latter part of his life. Why, then, do I choose to be wilfully blind to these personal inadequacies? I like to think it's because he never let his politics seep into what he wrote. He might have been an angry man off the page, but between those covers he was more akin to the great fabulists of yesteryear. His books are humane, warmhearted, quirky and challenging and will undoubtedly stand tall long after everyone has forgotten what a total shit he was.

I am embarrassed to admit that my first encounter with Saramago was in 1998, when he won the Nobel Prize. I make a point of reading at least one book by each year's winner, a practise that for the most part has seen me throw my hands up in exasperation at the crap those numbskulls at the Swedish Academy choose to recognise (Elfriede Jelinek anyone?). But when it came to Saramago I instantly fell in love. I adored Blindness, even if it borrowed a little too heavily from Camus's The Plague, and felt I had to read as much as I could by this wonderful writer. Luckily, Saramago was prolific and became ever more so as he got older. Barely a year would pass without a new novel appearing which, for me, was a cause for celebration. I ordered each one long in advance and would drop whatever I was reading the day it arrived. Even as I write, I have The Elephant's Journey on order and can't wait until it is released in September. Naturally, Saramago suffered the usual post-Nobel slump, churning out a few lesser works (The Cave, The Double, Seeing), but seemed to have just regained his powers. His most recently translated novel, 2005's Death At Intervals, was as good as anything he produced in his early days.

This year has already seen the publication of two non-fiction books. I wrote about Small Memories, Saramago's disappointing memoir of his youth, a few months back. Sitting on my bookshelf is the other work, an assortment of brief, reflective, polemic musings called The Notebook which I am scared to start. I have no desire to confront his prickly all-too-human quills again. Thankfully, I won't be forced to read The Notebook as his last will and testament. He has two novels that have yet to be released in translation, the aforementioned The Elephant's Journey and Cain (which, upon its publication in Portugal massively irked the local clergy, and caused a furore that would have been funny had Saramago not thrown in some spiteful anti-Semitic comments in his attempt to defend the book). There are also another ten or so early works that never appeared in English and that I hope come out - one each year - so that I might have the privilege of continuing to hear his gentle voice. It's sad he's gone, but at least he can no longer piss me off.

Which Way Jose? (A Rant About Repugnant Authors)

A couple of years ago, I was browsing in London's wonderful Daunt bookstore when I stumbled across a new novel by one of my favourite authors Jose Saramago. There had been no pre-press. No pomp and ceremony. The novel just appeared in stores, a paperback original. It was a pleasant surprise, all the more so because I was about to catch a flight back to Australia and knew that I would now be in the company of an old friend. As it turned out, Death at Intervals (or, as it is sometimes known, Death With Interruptions) is one of Saramago's greatest works, brimming with pathos, humour and a charming philosophical whimsy. Sitting next to me on the way across the Indian Ocean was an author of note who was visiting my shores for the Melbourne Writers' Festival. I foisted the book upon her and she too loved it. We chatted about all things Saramago for the remaining hours.

The "Unexpected Saramago Phenomenon" happened again this week, with the unexpected appearance of his new memoir Small Memories. Unlike several of his fellow Nobel Laureates (Canetti, Lessing and, in a quirky fictional sense, Coetzee spring to mind here) he has resisted the reflective bug and stuck to producing powerful, life-affirming literary fiction of the highest order... with the exception of a few stumbles - I'm looking at you Seeing, The Cave and The Double (Dostoevsky ought to have his boots licked for that one). Safe to say, overall I love Saramago's work. Blindness, The Stone Raft and Baltasar and Blimunda are modern masterpieces. But here's the thing. Jose Saramago, the person, is by all accounts a repugnant human being. Indeed, the Nobel Laureate that he might most resemble is Knut Hamsun, not only because of their similar love of nature and its wonders, or the fabulist air to their work, but also the unsavoury likelihood that he is a dyed-in-the-wool racist. Hamsun's affinity for Nazi ideology has been well documented. He admired Hitler. He chummed up with Goebbels. His legacy has been tainted accordingly (and let's face it, Hunger isn't THAT good, although Mysteries is...). Saramago is a slightly more complex case. I take no exception to his membership to the Portuguese Communist Party. I like that he is a fearless agitator. I have no problem with his criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, except when he resorts to easy (and uninformed) cliches about modern Nazism. However, I fear that his critical zeal has spilt over into outright anti-Semitism, something I cannot abide. He has made odd statements in the past, but his recent comment when launching his latest novel Cain pretty much sealed the deal for me. After calling the bible a "catalogue of bad morals" (to which, again, I take no exception), he went on to say that "it might offend the Jews but that doesn't really matter to me."

What can I make of the fact that the humanity expressed in the work of one of my favourite writers is not reflected in him as a person? Does this schism add a layer of falsity to his writing? There is a great book on this topic called Intellectuals by Paul Johnson in which the author explores the personal views of some of the greatest writers that have ever lived. Tolstoy was plain scary. Hemingway, Bowles, Mailer and Sartre were misogynist pigs. And don't get me started on Martin Amis (not that he ranks as one of the world's greatest but I needed to stick someone contemporary here). Hamsun was a willing accomplice to Nazism. Brecht was a heartless opportunist and party lackey. Dostoevsky was a drunken gambling fiend whose addiction served to destroy not only him but also those who loved him. Ditto Poe. The list goes on. Does this make them unreadable? Obviously not. As my older brother used to joke, "Do as I say, not as I do". But it does make me read them in a jaded light.

As I worked my way through Small Memories I searched for signs of what made him so contrarian. At 87, one would think that he is well-equipped for critical reflection. But this slight book reveals very little, and will unfortunately go down as one of his minor works. Aside from an older brother who died at age four and a domineering father, there was nothing to glean. I once asked a Portuguese friend what they thought of him. He said that people in his country are torn. He is undoubtedly one of literature's greats but he is well known for being a thoroughly dislikable person. Which is strange... Life has been long and, for the most part, good to Saramago. Oh well, I guess he was just born a douche.