Reviews/excerpts: The Corrections, Brick Lane

Evidence of my general malaise and cultural stagnation is the fact that it took me six weeks to finish three books. (Well, there was some dabbling in Let’s Go South East Asia, Irish For Beginners and The Watchmen on the side, but it was mostly those three.)

I enjoyed Brick Lane, but at the same time, I don’t have a lot to say about it. I haven’t read any of the other Booker nominees for this year, but am frankly quite surprised it was a favourite to win. I’m quite a sucker for books about immigrant angst and cultural disconnection and the inner struggle of the Asian (in the sense that the Brits use it, meaning Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi) woman in contemporary British society feeling hamstrung by the traditional mores of her community, but the thing is I don’t see anything about this book that made it stand out from all the others I’ve read in the same vein. Meera Syal may not be considered a literary heavyweight, but Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee packed a hell of a punch. I guess I’d say that if you’ve never read any books with a similar setting, Brick Lane’s as good a place to begin as any, but if you have, it’s more of the same. Having said that, by “more of the same” I do mean more of the same high quality of writing, more of the same spot-on evocations of London, and more of the same poignance and well-captured frustrations.

Borrowing Purple America and The Corrections at the same time was probably a bad idea, because by the time I got to The Corrections I was finding it increasingly hard to view small town America with anything more than contempt and pity. Jonathan Franzen’s splendid writing only served to compound my condescension.

“In the pageantry of weddings Enid reliably experienced the paroxysmal place of place – of the Midwest in general and suburban St. Jude in particular – that for her was the only true patriotism and the only viable spirituality. Living under presidents as crooked as Nixon and stupid as Reagan and disgusting as Clinton, she’d lost interest in American flag-waving, and not one of the miracles she’d ever prayed to God for had come to pass; but at a Saturday wedding in the lilac season, from a pew of the Paradise Valley Presbyterian Church, she could look around and see two hundred nice people and not a single bad one. All her friends were nice and had nice friends, and since nice people tended to raise nice children, Enid’s world was like a lawn in which the bluegrass grew so thick that evil was simply choked out: a miracle of niceness.”

Having said that, great characterization and one of those masterful bringing-it-all-together final chapters made even me begin to feel for the characters, Enid included. Quite an authorial feat, considering their various individual warts and collective dysfunctions. To that extent, the hype is justified. Some rather weak stretches like the bit on the cruise liner and anything and everything dealing with Lithuania really needed some editorial whipping into shape though.

So on Saturday I returned those and replenished my stash.

  • A Home at the End of the World (Michael Cunningham)
  • The Secret History (Donna Tartt)
  • East Of Eden (John Steinbeck)

More books that have been on my list for absolutely ages, yay! I can’t be culturally stagnating if I can feel this happy about a new haul.

Review + Excerpt: Purple America (Rick Moody)

Purple America isn’t a book I’d read again, but it was worth reading once.

I have a strange fascination with books about small town suburban America with its picket fences and depressing diners and general air of stagnation, but when I actually read them I always realize it takes a gifted writer to prevent the dead air and dull humdrumness he describes from taking over. Don DeLillo succeeds at times in Underworld, but even his considerable skills weren’t enough to prevent White Noise from becoming one of those books I finished just for the sake of finishing.

Rick Moody writes well enough to save Purple America from the same fate as White Noise. There isn’t a lot in the book that lends itself well to excerpting, but here’s one passage.

“…Hex Raitliffe prays the Great American prayer, the American psalm, the prayer of infants, though to whom he prays is unclear – Anglican New Testament God of the church of his parents? Interdenominational and mostly secular god of his liberal arts education? More likely, as with his fellow Americans, he supplicates now to a provisionally devised personal deity, made up on the spot, reasonably all-powerful, completely generous, adapted from Hollywood and rock and roll and moonlight on water. He prays to this God, with burnt offering, G-g-get me out of this, get me out of this one fix, I’ll do anything.”

Unfortunately, although the last few chapters are among the best, there’s a fair amount of dreck in the middle which I skimmed over, and the biggest downfall of the book for me was that it never quite lived up to the promise of its incredible first chapter, which is somewhat in the same vein as the beginning of Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, except it expresses the same amount of unsentimental heartbreak a lot more concisely and unconventionally.

You can read the beginning of AHWOSG here, but unfortunately I can’t find online excerpts for Purple America. Go into a bookstore and read the first chapter. Seriously. It’s one of those passages I come across every now and then in books which painfully reminds me that I can’t write for shit. As I said, it’s just a pity the rest of the book doesn’t maintain that exceptional quality.

Old Friends

Boxes and dust have been the order of the day, or rather, the order of the early morning hours between midnight and six, which is when I do the most of anything useful.

My family moved house while I was in London, and I’ve been going through the boxes from the old house bit by bit. I’m doing books first, deciding which ones actually get to live on shelves in the new room, and which ones get consigned to a box high up in a cupboard. It’s not always easy. Dealing with stuff at home is always immensely more complicated than in England, because here I have to make decisions about the accumulated sentimental junk of twenty years rather than four.

Childhood books are an issue. Some books get Shelf Status with little or no agonizing involved: the Narnian Chronicles, which I really must reread now adulthood informs me that Aslan’s meant to represent more than just a really noble lion; the Borribles books, certainly the darkest and bloodiest children’s books I’ve ever read, but also the most gripping and imaginative by far. But what about the Roald Dahls? Do I concede that I only reread them once every couple of years, and box them up, or do I grant them a precious place just because we go waaaaay back? And if I let the Roald Dahls onto the Shelves, how can I then deny space to the Dick King-Smiths, the Joan Aikens, the Enid Blytons, the E. Nesbits, the Colin Danns, the Judy Blumes, the Nancy Drews? How can I, with a clear conscience, banish I Am David and Malgudi Days and The Secret Garden and My Side Of The Mountain and White Fang and Grimble to the Box of the Unloved and Abandoned?

Faced with difficult decisions like these the other night, I dealt with the situation like an adult. I piled the books back in the boxes, found my old collection of Asterix comics, and read them till 6 AM, at which point my mother woke up for work, saw the light under my door, came in horrified, and nagged me into bed.

Excerpts: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

I first read Jane Eyre when I was eight. I never thought I appreciated it on a level higher than that of a trashy romance novel, but rereading it this past week seems to suggest it may have influenced me in ways I wasn’t aware of at the time. In teenage years I developed (and still hold to) characteristics and views extraordinarily similar to hers, but I certainly never consciously sought to emulate her.

On the self:

“I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give”…”Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.”

On hating how most of your fellow females talk to men:

“Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it – to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace…”

On how to address the man you are completely in love with, after being separated from him for ages, and meeting again to find him blind, crippled and morose:

“Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?”
“What for, Jane?”
“Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.”
“Am I hideous, Jane?”
“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”

Jane rocks.

Fury (Salman Rushdie) – First Impressions

Fury contains an overwhelming maelstrom of socio-economic-cultural-political-philosophical-mythological-literary-you-name-it-he-references-it references Rushdie pulls out and brandishes before the (probably, well anyway I am) less well-read reader.

My first reaction to this is to feel very stupid. I mean yeah, when he talks of Spinoza and Derrida, I know they’re philosophers; when he refers to Alex Portnoy and Mr Roth I know he means Philip; and when he mentions Jil Sander power suits and Marcus Schenkenberg hell yeah I know what he’s talking about there, but when he describes a building with a cornerstone etching of “to Pythianism”, I’m afraid I must admit I was unaware that this was a clash of Greek and Mesopotamian metaphors, or that Pytho was the ancient name of Delphi, or that Pythian verse is written in the dactylic hexameter, so thank you for telling me, Mr Rushdie.

My second reaction is that he’s trying a little too hard. In describing a girl, I don’t quite get the need to include that she is wearing a black D’Angelo Voodoo baseball cap, except so that Rushdie can say look at me peeps, I still got love fo’ the streets. When describing a commercial featuring a group of fashionable vampires wearing Ray-Bans, I don’t quite get the need to explain that “thanks to Buffy on TV, vampires were hot”. It’s something I noted about The Ground Beneath Her Feet as well. I can’t say there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just that I have this recurring mental image of Salman Rushdie doing Dr Evil’s “I’m cool…I’m hip…t-chk-a-chk-a-chk-a etc.” routine, and it’s kinda scary.

But it’s early days yet. I’m only 49 pages into the book, and although I may poke a little fun at him now and then, Salman Rushdie is still a writer whose mastery and flair with the English language makes me quail and kowtow and wonder why the hell anyone ever bothers reading this website when they could be reading Salman Rushdie.

I Hate You, Dan Rhodes (A Timoleon Vieta Come Home Review)

I read Timoleon Vieta Come Home (Dan Rhodes) in the train on the way to Newcastle, also listening to Roxette’s greatest hits album (laugh all you like, I’m secure in my music obsessiveness. For the record, the other albums I listened to on the way were Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights and Extra Yard: The Bouncement Revolution, a Big Dada compilation) at the same time.

I really, really liked the book. It was extremely funny, written in the sort of effortlessly readable prose that I tend to be too indisciplined in my writing to manage, and packed a hell of an emotional wallop while actively resisting cliché. But it left me in bits, and I need someone to blame. Read on.

Timoleon Vieta (a mongrel with beautiful eyes) was trying to find his way home after being abandoned in Rome by his owner (Cockroft, a former pops orchestra conductor, now a sad has-been living in Tuscany), under the influence of a manipulative object of infatuation (a mysterious figure known as the Bosnian). Timoleon Vieta was living on rats and bin scavengings, slinking along barely noticed, his skinny belly close to the ground, tired and hungry and sad, and then Roxette sang “I guess loneliness found a new friend”, and my heart almost broke.

I went on through the book, through instance after instance of how our imaginations eagerly build up hopes for happy and meaningful futures, through the slow agonizing creep of disbelief when those hopes start to be eroded or are destroyed in one fell swoop, through Cockroft’s desperation for some company, any company, that won’t eventually leave him without a backward glance, through Timoleon Vieta’s aching paw pads on his long journey home, and then I came to the ending, where my imagination’s hope for a heartwarming resolution to all this pain was cruelly dashed in exactly the same way it had happened to almost everyone else in the book.

I closed the book and sat back destroyed, watching the countryside race heartlessly past, and then I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt started up.

I hate you, Dan Rhodes. I hate you, Roxette. And I’m not even a dog person.

Review: Bel Canto (Ann Patchett)

When I was fourteen or fifteen I read a trashy romance novel called Perfect by Judith McNaught. It was about a Hollywood superstar (male, ruggedly handsome) framed for the murder of his wife, escaping from jail and taking a hostage (female, beautiful, feisty) in his bid for freedom. They drive across the country to his remote log cabin in snowy mountains, bonding along the way despite their implacably opposed positions in the situation. Yet even as she gradually comes to believe he is an innocent man, and he is falling more and more in love with her despite himself, the fact that she is important only as his shield from police gunfire lurks continually in the background. Things come to a head one night in the cabin. His paranoia explodes into fury. Terrified, she tries to escape. In pursuit, he comes to a frozen river and thinks her car has gone through the ice. He plunges in to try and rescue her, risking his own life. She saves him, and from then on they take on the world, prove his innocence and celebrate their new-found love. He takes her to parties in Hollywood and she dances with Patrick Swayze and Kevin Costner. Happy ever after. The end.

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) is Perfect, minus the great sex. Terrorists storm posh party in poor Latin-American country hoping to take President hostage, but it turns out the President skipped the party in order to watch his favourite soap opera. Yes, really. Terrorists say “Oh, poo” but decide to keep everyone else hostage anyway. Japanese CEO of behemoth electronics corporation and opera singer fall madly in love despite the small glitch of not being able to speak the same language. Everyone else also falls madly in love with opera singer, by the way, because she’s beautiful and her voice is wonderful, wonderful, Maria Callas and Kiri Te Kanawa eat your hearts out; it makes grown men cry and gives young terrorists hard-ons in ways that jungle warfare never did; no one can think of anything more wonderful than sitting and listening to her sing all day, every day, because of course everyone loves opera. CEO’s translator and young girl terrorist called Carmen (aha, allusion!) also fall madly in love, but oh my God, she’s a terrorist and he’s a hostage, how will it all end?

[Spoilers follow]

It ends, my friends, in tragedy. The terrorists have been making ridiculous demands – freeing of prisoners, aid programmes, a Playstation 2 for every member of the organization etc., and the government won’t budge. Special forces decide after a couple of months of sitting around scratching their balls that yeah, they should probably storm the compound. In a cruel twist of fate, Japanese CEO is killed trying to protect Carmen the girl terrorist (I forgot to mention that all the hostages and the terrorists really get along by now. It’s quite a love-in. They play football and all, although I think the Latin-American Terrorists vs Japanese Electronics Corporation People fixture would have been a bit of a foregone conclusion). Translator and opera singer are heartbroken. How will they recover from this loving and losing? They will marry each other, that’s how, even if they displayed not a jot of romantic interest in each other all the time they were imprisoned (well, the translator did proposition the opera singer for sex, but that was on behalf of the CEO). They marry in Puccini’s birthplace, and will live in Italy, where opera singers should live. Happy ever after. The end.

I’m thinking the people who gave this book the Orange Prize and Pen/Faulkner Award must have seen something in it that I’m not seeing. I’m thinking I wasted a few days’ worth of reading time on this. I’m thinking Judith McNaught should be sitting in a room somewhere really pissed off.

I Guess Chuck Palahniuk Thinks I’m A Loser

From Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk):

‘My tiny life. My little shit job. My Swedish furniture. I never, no, never told anyone this, but before I met Tyler, I was planning to buy a dog and name it “Entourage.”

This is how bad your life can get.’

I suppose it says something about me that I think the dog’s name is brilliant.

Lessons In Low Self-Esteem

I finally finished Life A User’s Manual (Georges Perec), which has taught me that I am an ignorant, stupid, boring, uncreative person. Now I am reading The Hours (Michael Cunningham), which, 48 pages in, is already teaching me that I really can’t write for shit.

You learn a lot from reading.

The Well-Tempered SF/Fantasy Plot Device

It occurred to me, on reading The Well-Tempered Plot Device, that with SF/Fantasy writing, the simple love-it-or-hate-it divides don’t exist. You either love it, hate it, or if you’re like me, both.

He starts off by promising that “You have to remember that Mr Donaldson’s spent years learning to produce a book so flatulent you have to be careful not to squeeze it in a public place. All I can do in the time available is to offer instruction on the first and most important element of crummy writing, which is (as my title suggests) bad plotting. I can’t promise that by the time you’ve read these pages you’ll have learned to write significantly more stereotyped characters, or that your style will have become significantly more leaden and clichéd. But I do promise that you’ll be fully conversant with the many varieties of plot device, their use and function, and you’ll be able to recognize and admire their handling in the works of the masters: Lionel Fanthorpe, A.E. van Vogt, and the early sword-and-sorcery novels of Michael Moorcock, to name only some of the virtuosi of the plot device I haven’t space to mention in what follows…” and it just gets better and better from there.

He doesn’t really mention the naming conventions (like, why isn’t anyone in fantasy ever called Reg or Cuthbert? Why are they all Gwynion or Tantreth or Xanthia?) or David Edding’s amazing recycling feats which remain unmatched by any Green tree-huggy types in our world, but it’s still going to hit lots of nerves/G-spots if you’ve ever read the genre. Enjoy.