A Small Tribute To Some Literary Giants

It's shaping up to be a sad year for literature.

Having just read that Barry Unsworth died, I realise that we've lost three writers who, if you will pardon the pun, bookmarked significant developmental stages in my reading/writing life.

First, of course, was Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are. I still remember sitting on the huge caterpillar pillow in my primary school library, sailing off to the world of Max and the wild things, oblivious to the other kids or teachers around me. Although I might not have truly understood the book at the time, it encouraged me to disappear into my own imagination and actively engage with the people and things I met there. I dare say it was also the precursor to my tenth grade Creative Writing teacher calling my parents in to discuss my "very fertile, but rather disturbing" mind.

Like many teens I gravitated toward dystopias, thanks in part to the great Ray Bradbury. Cormier's I Am The Cheese might have pipped it at the post, but Fahrenheit 451, with its world of banned books (take it as allegory for censorship or, as Bradbury himself claimed, the destructive force of mindless entertainments on reading) played an important part in opening my eyes to the subversive potential of the written word.

Barry Unsworth played a much more subtle role in my life, and not through any of his more celebrated works. Losing Nelson, Unsworth's tale of a lonely old man playing with his army figurines in a dark basement, taught me the importance of quiet beauty in literature, and showed me that a microcosm filled with compassion and empathy (the whole book takes place in his flat) can be just as weighty as a multi-generational, multi-national epic. In my humble opinion, it should have won him a second Booker.

Sendak, Bradbury, Unsworth and, of course Carlos Fuentes. Mortal men, it turns out, but immortal artists.

Microviews 16: Amis, Morrison, Barry

Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis
There was a time when Martin Amis could do no wrong. Money. The Rachel Papers. Time's Arrow (yeah, go stuff yourself, haters!). The Information. And then came Yellow Dog. If ever a single book destroyed my love for a writer, it was that pile of steaming crap. Since then, Amis has struggled to get back on track, regularly putting out fair-to-middling shadows of his former brilliance.The bitterness remains, as does his linguistic mastery. But, in every other sense, age has not done him any favours. With Lionel Asbo, Amis is trying his level best to recapture the acerbic satirical stylings of his early years but he just ain't got the knack to pull it off anymore. Lionel Asbo is a lower class pommy hooligan who wins 140 million pounds in the national lottery. There was a time that this premise would have been perfect fodder for Amis's cannon but these days the old fuddy duddy doesn't seem to know what to do with it. There are some mildly amusing moments, but for the most part it just reads like an aristocratic prat taking cheap shots at the English working class.

Home by Toni Morrison
The Nobel curse is a weird beast. It either drops the laureate immediately back into obscurity (Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Muller), turns them into complete dicks (Gunter Grass, V.S. Naipaul - though to be fair he was already a complete dick) or allows them to continue on in slightly diluted form (Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, as much as it pains me to say so). Very few actually rise above their earlier work to make even greater art. Toni Morrison is one of those few. Since being awarded literature's most prestigious prize, she has written three beautiful, if ever shorter, works that have not only done justice to her name but arguably added to its gravitas. She has also managed to cultivate the world's best set of dreadlocks. But I digress... Home is another small, powerful novel to add to the pile. The story of Frank Money, an African American veteran who returns from the non-segregated army in Korea to the still very much segregated "homeland" of America, it is searing in its indictment of the recent past. It is also a beautiful hymn to the downtrodden - Money's redemption is a wonderful thing to behold. I wonder whether there should be a special Nobel Prize for surviving the curse.

We All Fall Down by Peter Barry
I don't know whether it is a spectacular case of 'sophomore album slump' or whether We All Fall Down was the book left languishing in Peter Barry's bottom drawer only to be resurrected in the wake of his debut's success, but this has got to be one of the most disappointing follow ups to a literary bolt from the blue that I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I Hate Martin Amis Et Al was an absolute cracker. Hilarious, madcap, insightful and superbly original. In other words, everything that Barry's latest effort is not. Supposedly a skewering of the advertising world in times of financial collapse, it charts the downfall of a high-flyer who (surprise surprise) eventually finds dignity in poverty. Ho hum. Didn't Elliot Perlman do that over a decade ago? We all know how vacuous and demoralising the advertising industry can be. If Barry had intended to show us that it can also be incredibly boring, he didn't need to make us experience it first-hand. Turns out in this round, Amis gets the win.

The Cunning Conspiracy of Awesome: How My New Year's Resolution To Read Less Is About To Be Massively Thwarted (As Is My Preference for Pithy Post Titles)

Not that I think everything is about me, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Gods of Literature have gathered on Mount Papyrus to punish me for deeming 2012 my Year of Lesser Reading. As I said back in January, I have set this year aside to write. That means no 250 books, no fast living, minimal socialising and a gradual slowdown of my legal work. Alas, while I have no problem with the majority of those sacrifices, 2012 is shaping up to be one of the best years for literature in recent memory and I am dying to throw my computer to the wind and curl up on the couch with a pile of good books. I have already enjoyed newies from Laszlo Krasznohorkai, Toni Morrison, Shalom Auslander, Laurent Binet and Dan Rhodes. Then there were the ones I just haven't got to yet (Joyce Carol Oates, Ben Marcus, John Burnham Schwartz and collections from Jose Saramago and Roberto Bolano) and a couple of disappointments (I'm looking at you Iain Banks!!!!).

If that wasn't enough already, a quick glance on the literary horizon sees:
- Charles Yu returning to the short form after his incredible debut novel How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe. Early reports for Sorry. Please. Thank You have been glowing;
- Michael Chabon channeling his inner Nick Hornby and doing for music what he previously did for comics in the highly-anticipated Telegraph Avenue;
- Ian McEwan getting in touch with his feminine side in the spy-thriller Sweet Tooth;
- Martin Amis hoping to redeem his recent career slump with the seemingly crass state of the nation novel Lionel Asbo;
- Salman Rushdie finally giving his side of the fatwa story in his memoir Joseph Anton (expect annoying appearances from Bono);
- Enrique Vila-Matas nodding furiously at James Joyce in Dublinesque which, I hope, is more Montano's Malady than Never Any End To Paris;
- Junot Diaz, who has remained suspiciously silent since winning the Pulitzer for Oscar Wao, finally sticking his head above the water line in a new collection of short stories called This Is How You Lose Her.
- the publication of Jose Saramago's early rural novel Raised From The Ground (yep, that's two books from him in one year - pretty impressive output for a dead guy!);
- Last but most certainly not least the latest book from one of my absolute favourite living writers Philippe Claudel. If The Investigation is anywhere near as great as Brodeck's Report I can safely assume it will top my list at the end of the year.

Yes, I am being heavily tested and I already know that I am going to fail. The temptation is too great. Alas, I have no choice but to anger the Lit Gods. Prepare for paper cuts...

Microviews 15: Vann, Rhodes, Binet

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.

The Pulitzer Pisstake!

And now for a hiatus from my hiatus...

As you may have noticed, I've been absent of late doing God-knows-what, who-the-hell-knows-where (well, writing in Prague actually). As such I've missed some pretty big events. The newly elected premiere of the banana state done gone and scrapped his literary awards, proving that the idiots up north just voted in some even bigger idiot who cannot read. Former Waffen SS lackey Gunter Grass went and pissed in the face of Israel (which was an interesting about turn for the once staunch supporter) and so the troubled state reciprocated by taking a diplomatic dump on his head. Needless to say, both came out looking rather mucky. And JK Rowling proved herself the most canny being in publishing by choosing to eschew the Hunger Games generation in favour of a book for "grown-ups" (aka the former little shits who got into reading thanks to her series about earthenware).

Meanwhile, prize season has kicked into high gear, with the shortlists for the IMPAC and the Orange (really, is that still going?) awards being released. Particular kudos must go to shunned Arthur C. Clark almost-was Christopher Priest for launching into an hilarious tirade about the authors who beat him to the quick. But all that pales in comparison with news that the Pulitzer committee wouldn't be awarding a prize for fiction this year, the first time it has failed to do so since 1977. To be fair they were served up a pretty ordinary shortlist - an incomplete (in every sense of the word) novel by David Foster Wallace, a novella by now two-time bridesmaid Denis Johnson (not that novellas are totally out of contention for major prizes - I'm looking at you Julian Barnes), and a mildly exciting debut by Karen Russell. Surely there were more deserving contenders. Surely the Pulitzer committee need not have passed over this year's prize for fiction. I mean they awarded it to Geraldine Brooks for Chrissakes (I still maintain they meant to give it to E. L. Doctorow for a book of the same name in the same year but were to embarrassed to admit their mistake). There must have been something worthy of the massive sales spike such an honour bestows. Think of the poor publishers!!! Who will put food on their paper plates?

If only I had finished my book in time. I coulda been a contender!

The Hazards of Expectation Mismanagement

One of the fringe benefits of my recent presentation at the opening of the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia was perusing the shelves and finding two more novels by I. J. Singer, author of one of my all-time favourite books, The Brothers Ashkenazi. I had not heard of either book (admittedly I didn't exactly search them out with any particular fervour) and so stumbling across them pretty much made my day. It's been a long while since I've borrowed a book from a library and so I was immediately struck by a crushing sense of urgency - I would need to read them both before the return date lest I rack up the sort of fines I haven't seen since my teenage years. Thankfully, neither Yoshe Kalb nor The Family Carnovsky are Ashkenazi-length bricks. Also, quite fortuitously, I was heading off on a holiday to Tasmania the following day, so I figured I should pack one amongst my paper travel companions and knock it over straight away. I opted for the shorter of the two, Yoshe Kalb.

The novel tells of two rival rabbinic dynasties brought to the brink of civil war thanks to a rather odd character who might be Nahum, the learned but tortured youngster of Nyesheve, or Yoshe the loon of Bialogura, or both. Its recounting of the rising religious tumult set against the backdrop of imminent pogroms made for dense but compelling reading and the novel kept me company for the better part of a day, which happened to include a rather strenuous walk up The Hazards (a minor mountain formation on Coles Bay).

Much to my dismay, Yoshe Kalb was not The Brothers Ashkenazi. In fact it wasn't even a cousin Ashkenazi. Woe is me. Looking back, Yoshe Kalb could not have possibly lived up to the expectations I had built for it. After finishing Singer's larger masterpiece and resigning myself to never finding another word written by 'the better brother', I was so overjoyed at finding these two books that nothing short of a miracle could have caused me to read them objectively.

So now I am at a crossroads. Do I read The Family Carnovsky and risk having to eat the words I have long been spouting - including to The Age in my interview after winning the story award - that I. J. towers above his philandering sleazebag of a little brother? More tangentially, should I be as excited as I currently am at having just purchased Satantango, the new novel by Laszlo Krasznohorkai, author of the impossibly dense work of genius, The Melancholy of Resistance? Turns out Satantango's blurb reads almost exactly the same as the synopsis of a novel I had intended to write somewhere down the track, which makes me extremely excited to see it done well (and disappointed that I was beaten to it by someone I greatly admire).

Stuff it. I'm reading Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral For A Dog instead. At least I'm only basing my expectations on its wackily fun cover. And we all know that's the best way to judge any book!

Bookworms Turns 200!!

One of my favourite scenes in modern literature has to be "The Most Photographed Barn In America" in Don Delillo's masterpiece White Noise (yes, I rate it above Underworld). I just love the idea of bussing in flocks of tourists so that they can take photos of some crappy shack in the middle of nowhere, and thereby make good on the moniker. It is with a similar dose of self-referential, self-fulfilling idiocy that I now mark the 200th entry in Bait For Bookworms with little more than this short musing to mark the 200th entry in Bait For Bookworms. Can't say I ever thought I'd get this far.

Regular programming will resume shortly.

Tis all...

The Monumental Month of March

You might have noticed a certain calming quietude on this here blog of late; it is the sound of me fulfilling one of my new year's aspirations. Yes, for the first time in my life I have actually managed to write more than I have read this month. Indeed, get this, my book tally for March thus far is... 4! That's how many books I usually get through in a slow week. Moreover, I've been focusing mostly on short stories - Babel, Malamud, any other crushingly bleak misanthrope I can get my hands on. You get the picture. I'm going on holiday next week so I will probably up the total to something a little more respectable then but still, I'm kind of proud of myself. I am finally getting the hang of shutting out the world and focusing on what I'm supposed to be doing (I'm conveniently not mentioning that I've also been treading the boards in what looks to be my last ever stage show). I've given myself until the end of August to finish draft one of the book. It's an optimistic target, but if I don't start setting my own deadlines I'm going to be kvetching about the stupid thing for years to come.

Meanwhile, if you're in Melbourne and have some spare time on Sunday, come down to the grand opening of the spanking new Lamm Jewish Library of Australia on Hawthorn Road near the corner of Glenhuntly in Caulfield. I'm running a session at 2pm on writing the Holocaust in the 21st Century. Sounds fun, right? Basically, it will be an opportunity for me to rant against crap like The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, Life Is Beautiful (which, despite myself, I sort of love) and any number of other awful camp romances (by which I mean Concentration Camp, not Armistead Maupin novels) that seem to be popping up all over the place. Apparently I'm funny when I rant. And my face goes weird shades of red. What more could you want?

Keret Kancels

Having spent the past couple of days immersing myself in Etgar Keret's wacky universe, I was saddened to hear that he has had to cancel his Australian trip because his father has taken seriously ill. I was really looking forward to doing my In Coversation event in Sydney and hope it will be rescheduled for sometime later this year. But in the meantime, I wish Etgar and his father all the best for a speedy and complete recovery.

Return Fire (Excoriation Blues Part 2)

Further to my rant about hatchet jobs, I came across a few examples of return fire from aggrieved authors while reading The Independent and figured I had to pilfer them for your entertainment.

Check these out for some pucker-up, cats-arse sour grapes:

Noam Chomsky responding to John Gray's poor review of his latest book: "The stunning irrationality of [Gray's] inferences renders comment superfluous".

Alain de Botton on Caleb Crain's review of The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work in The New York Times: "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make."

Martin Amis slagging off Tibor Fischer over the latter's review of his unquestionably appalling piece of shit, Yellow Dog: "Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch. Oh yeah: and a fat-arse."

Niall Ferguson on Pankaj Mishra's review of his book Civilization: "If he won't apologise for calling me a racist, I will persecute him until he does... it seems to be becoming de rigueur for mediocrities to build their fame on attacking those more successful than them."

Amongst her 27 angry tweets following a bad review in The Boston Globe, was this hilarious stab from Alice Hoffman:"Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron. How do some people get to review books?... Now any idiot can be a critic."

Ayelet Waldman lets out a primal scream in 140 or less characters, following bad reviews for her husband's book The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man: "To the fucking MORON Amazon reviewers giving Awesome Man 1 star [because] 'It would be good for, like, a 2 year old' IT WAS WRITTEN FOR LITTLE KIDS"

Nothing like seeing great authors turn all 13-year-old kid in a playground! I'll just sit back now and wait for Mr. Perlman's response to Mr. Gates. Fire away!