Dominion - C.J. Sansom (2012)

C.J. Sansom is well known as the writer of historical crime fiction featuring Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer and solver of sixteenth century mysteries. With Dominion Sansom presents an alternate history in which Winston Churchill did not become prime minister in 1939 and Britain has instead signed an armistice with Nazi Germany. Dominion is set in 1952 and media mogul Lord Beaverbrook is prime minster of a Britain that is steadily losing its independence to Germany. Western Europe is under the heel of Nazi Germany, who are still at war with the Soviets across a huge eastern front. America, having never gone to war against Japan, is essentially in isolation. 

For reasons unknown I’ve hardly read any alternate history novels, otherwise known as counterfactuals. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) has so far completely passed me by, despite Dick being one of my favourite authors. Dominion’s premise of an alternate WWII is perhaps a well worn one, but Sansom still manages to present a range of possibilities that fascinate. It does help to know your WWII history to get the most out of the novel, as there are a range of characters from the period who are cast in counterfactual roles that aren’t that implausible. Winston Churchill is the leader of the resistance, Enoch Powell is in charge of keeping India very much a part of a British Empire that is yet to wane and British fascist Oswald Mosley is home secretary. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the book is the representation of Nazi Germany, with Hitler still alive, taking their plan for Europe and its Jews to its logical conclusion.

Dominion’s intriguing premise is played out within a suspenseful plot that takes ordinary people and makes them into prime players in the struggle against Nazi Germany’s hold over Britain. In a superbly rendered 1950‘s Britain Sansom places ordinary middle-class citizens, such as David and Sarah Fitzgerald, in the middle of the struggle against Germany’s hold over Britain. David’s friend, the fragile scientist Frank Muncaster, learns a terrible secret and David and his resistance comrades must protect him from capture by the Nazis and get him out of the country. Much of the tension within the novel comes from the urgency of their mission and this is bolstered by well rounded characterization and vivid descriptions of the grime and desperation of winter in London. The principal protagonists back stories are revealed in segments, rather than being shoehorned into one chapter, allowing a greater connection to the characters and their motivations. 

Dominion succeeds in part because Sansom deftly reveals the dark heart of humanity by exploring just how humans can be persuaded to perpetrate heinous acts. This elevates what is essentially a popular fiction thriller into an important novel. Sansom places familiar holocaust horrors in unfamiliar settings, giving the reader a much needed historical jolt. The chilling scenes in which British Jews are rounded up and marched through the streets of towns are brilliantly written and serve as a timely reminder that extreme intolerance is not just a Nazi phenomenon. In this context the significance of Frank Muncaster’s horrific treatment by a gang of school bullies during his vivid backstory is all too clear. Also the fact that Nazi manhunter, Gunther Hoth, is given a convincing back story and is portrayed as a flawed and sensitive human gives the novel an unexpectedly powerful dimension. Despite being placed in charge of finding Muncaster, Gunther feels old and washed up due to a broken marriage and the rigors of the Nazi mission to dominate Europe. He’s just about the most sympathetic Nazi character you could meet, which makes his worldview all the more disturbing.

Despite its successful exposition of important themes, Dominion is not without its flaws. Sansom’s style could be described as utilitarian and his writing is sometimes pedestrian, particularly during some of the action scenes towards to end, which suffer from a rather flat tone. These are minor quibbles however, as Sansom is brilliant at creating a narrative tension that is maintained throughout the novel. Also Sansom succeeds at using dialogue as a means to explore key themes, something that is tricky to pull off. Fairly lengthy dialogue heavy expositions regarding politics, the state of Europe, the Jewish situation and pre-war pacifism in Britain are all explored using this technique. 

Dominion was read by my book club groups and the members took to it with great enthusiasm, despite its hefty girth and the counterfactual whiff of science fiction. Twenty five people can’t be wrong (I think?), indicating that  if you enjoy a quality thriller and like the idea of a counterfactual Nazi Europe, then Dominion may be well worth your attention. 

The (Reprehensible) Finkler Question - Howard Jocobson (2010)

At the end of each year I give my book club group at the library the opportunity to vote on both the best and the worst books read during the year. Three years ago The Finkler Question was overwhelmingly voted the worst book of the year. This was the year it won the Man Booker Prize, a fact that all thirty active members could not fathom considering it was totally unappealing in almost every way. When considering my choice for the worst book of 2013 I realised that I still hadn’t read a book that came close to the awfulness of The Finkler Question. I can’t even bring myself to give even a brief synopsis, the memories are simply too distressing, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I may well be overdoing this a bit (true, but only a bit), but for a book that was meant to be funny (it wasn’t at all) and had won a major prize, surely it should display some finer points? Unfortunately the extremely irritating protagonist, overdone theme of identity (of the possible Jewish kind*) and a prose style like fingernails down a blackboard were reprehensible. There I’ve said it: reprehensible. This is a nice segue to the real reason why I'm talking about this book. Recently I created a ratings link on this blog, but my lowest rating of reprehensible was not represented due to the fact that no book has deserved such a description during the lifetime of the blog. Recently I realised that I may not read a reprehensible book for a long while and that the rating would remain tragically unrepresented. So, it was logical; all I needed to do was make a brief post about just how the dreaded The Finkler Question scarred me for life and the problem would be solved. 

If anyone happens across this post and had a good time reading The Finkler Question, then please tell me why I’m wrong. Meanwhile read it at your peril!

* This is in no way an anti-Semitic comment.

The Tree of Man - Patrick White (1956)

After many years of good intentions I have finally read a novel by that renowned Australian literary curmudgeon, Patrick White. My 1973 edition of The Tree of Man was given to me by a good friend, who once read out a paragraph to me during a visit on a searing hot summers day. I was captivated by White’s lyrical phrasing and his portrayal of the Australian experience, all from one paragraph. Patrick White is considered to be one of Australia’s great writers and one of the significant writers of twentieth century literature. The Tree of Man certainly presents a convincing case for literary genius, however it also caused me to wonder about White’s relevance in modern Australia.

The Tree of Man traces the life of Stan Parker who, along with his wife, Amy Parker, settle on a patch of land close to Sydney in the first few years of the twentieth century. One could say that it is a family saga, yet without the melodrama that usually inhabits such narratives, thanks largely to White’s modernist style. White’s style isn’t exactly the stream of consciousness of the modernists, rather he colours the narrative with the characters subjective thoughts and feelings; creating a kind of allusive narrative impressionism that imbues the mundane aspects of Stan and Amy’s everyday lives with a very Australian mysticism. 

White’s dense modernist style makes the novel a reasonable challenge to read, but one that is well worth pursuing. The novel has strong existential themes which are explored through the lives of Stan and Amy, as they tend to their dairy farm, have children and deal with the vicissitudes of life. Their lives are  made profound against the background of the elemental Australian landscape, yet White also tears away their certainty, referring to them as “ant man” and “ant woman,” reminding us that the control humans have over our destinies is limited; rendering us merely a small part of a far greater capricious whole. Within this existential context Amy and Stan live, like Adam and Eve, in their bush eden and create their own world. The isolation of their lives, with initially few neighbors in the semi wilderness area, gives an impression of what it was like for the first settlers in Australia. There are floods, bush-fires and thunderstorms that threaten their tenuous existence. Yet despite the challenges they persevere and remain together throughout their lives on the land, representing a triumph of will against a backdrop of uncertainty.

The Tree of Man brilliantly portrays the cycles of life, taking Stan and Amy through youth and into middle age. White deals with the psychology of these changes subtly, through their relationships with their son and daughter and the land they live on. Stan and Amy’s relationship evolves through the struggle to understand each other, with Amy often pondering whether she’ll ever really “see into” Stan. As the novel takes them into old age they struggle to understand death and God. White uses old age as a litmus test for the concept of God, or the Christian God at least. Stan is perplexed, whilst Amy takes to the idea more readily. Stan sees God in a gob of spit he produces whilst he is being harassed by a born again evangelist and suddenly his life makes sense, but not the kind of sense that Christianity so earnestly tries to provide.

The last short chapter, only two pages long, beautifully sums up the themes of The Tree of Man and is one of the greatest I’ve ever read. Stan’s grandchild lingers in a wooded gully thinking about his grandfather’s life, feeling helpless and unformed. He decides to write a poem “of life”, a notion that overwhelms him. After a long intense novel filled with White’s allusive, poetic style (poetic realism, I thought to myself over a cup of tea) White is hinting that life itself is poetry; that each person writes their own poetry with their lives and that the essence of a life provides its own meaning, one that is separate to God and religion. 

Although White is rightly considered to be one of literature’s greats, I realised that his writing is deeply unfashionable, in Australia at least. Looking around online I found that I wasn’t the only one to come to this conclusion. I mostly agree with the author of this piece, that White’s modernist style dates his writing, that it is perhaps too dark for most and that the fact that he was Australian makes him peripheral on the world stage. However the notion that ignoring his work has become a bad habit that persists is the most persuasive, and this was certainly true in my case. I ignored White for far too long, so I‘ll end by advising others to not perpetuate this trend, do yourself a literary favour and read Patrick White.

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion (2013)

The Rosie Project provides a perfect opportunity to examine the difference between popular fiction and literary fiction. The previous book I read and reviewed, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), epitomizes literary fiction. Wallace’s prose style is erudite, dense and complex. Infinite Jest’s plot is multilayered, the characters motives are influenced by their often dark psyches and the narrative explores humanity’s struggle with deep existential issues, both in a personal and cultural context. The Rosie Project has a straightforward plot, simple themes, the characters motivations are easy to understand and it is written in a simple unpretentious style. Does this difference make one novel better or more important than the other?

If The Rosie Project were a movie then it would be a romantic comedy. The principle protagonist is Don Tillman, a geneticist and academic who knows many things about the world but is unaware that he has many of the characteristics of Aspergers. Don is frustrated that his efforts with women never get beyond the first date, so he devises a questionnaire designed to find the perfect woman who displays all of the attributes he believes will make his life complete. Rosie Jarman, is, of course, the complete opposite to everything Don desires in a mate. When Rosie seeks Don’s help to find her real father all manner of situations arise that both pull them apart and bring them together. The ending of the novel is inevitable given the demands of its genre.

The Rosie Project does indeed display many of the hallmarks of its genre, but avoids popular fiction’s tendency to be mediocre. The novel is well written, with a tight fast paced plot that doesn’t allow the reader much time to ponder about its lack of psychological depth. Don and Rosie sparkle when they are on the page together; like any good romantic comedy the chemistry between the two leads can make or break the narrative and in this case it makes it. The Rosie Project is also very funny. Don’s Aspergers-like characteristics allow for some fine deadpan humour and this alone makes the novel infinitely better than the excruciating The Finkler Question that I had to read for the book club a few years ago (I obviously still haven't gotten over it, and rightly so). 

The Rosie Project also has some decent themes to explore; rationality vs emotionality, tolerance of difference and the moral obligations attached to decision making. These themes are dealt with in the context of a fast moving romantic comedy and are therefore not explored in any great depth. The fact that the novel has no pretensions towards being a literary masterpiece means that such superficiality is perhaps of no great importance, but if this is the case then just what is the value of popular fiction?

Are the differences between popular fiction and literary fiction meaningful? Why do we read fiction? Is it for enjoyment or for something more important? Literary fiction can challenge in an artistic sense, it can raise important issues and explore them deeply and it can make us think about what it is to be human. These issue are all valuable and do make make literary fiction important culturally. However it is also beneficial to read for enjoyment and relaxation, and that’s where popular fiction comes into its own. Popular fiction can be psychologically comforting, whilst literary fiction can often be the opposite (but not always, of course). If popular fiction’s aim is to comfort and entertain then that certainly has value.What Infinite Jest and The Rosie Project have in common is that they both achieve what they set out to do within the context of their own genres. I would not have read The Rosie Project if it hadn’t been chosen by my book club members, but I’m pleased that I did because it has reminded me that well written popular fiction does have its place and can be well worth reading.

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace (1996)

Infinite Jest is perhaps the most significant cult novel of the last twenty years. It has also been a critical success, with Time Magazine listing it as one of the hundred greatest novels since 1923. Viewed as a prime example of so called hysterical realism, Infinite Jest is a challenging monster of a book. It’s undoubtably important, intelligent, and brilliant; but it’s also obtuse, arcane, extreme, digressive, frustrating and unrelentingly verbose. The page count, including the endnotes, clocks in at 1079 pages, however the font is tiny, so really the book would be the equivalent of about 1800 standard font pages. Infinite Jest is not your typical reading experience, it’s more like embarking on a relationship; you have to work hard at it and it can be both a satisfying and difficult experience. 

Infinite Jest has three narrative streams that eventually converge (and I really mean eventually). The first involves the Incandenza family – Hal, Mario and Orin are the sons of Avril (The Moms) and James Incandenza (Himself), who founded the Enfield Tennis Academy in Boston. James Incandenza, an amateur auteur, is the creator of the film Infinite Jest (alternately referred to as The Entertainment), which is fatally addictive. A significant portion of Infinite Jest is set at the tennis academy and it is perhaps the most impenetrable of the three streams. Tennis related argot is used extensively and there are sequences that are extremely digressive and obscure, not that this isn’t typical of the novel as a whole. 

The second stream, which is set in a nearby drug and alcohol recovery centre called Ennet House, is perhaps the most accessible. The colourful characters who inhabit Ennet House are arguably more relatable than the ones who populate the tennis academy. The Ennet House sections are particularly tragicomic and endlessly inventive. Wallace riffs on the pathos of addiction, whilst revealing characters back stories in uncomfortable detail. The Ennet House denizens are great fodder for Wallace’s totally devastating satire on the dark side of Western culture’s obsession with instant gratification. 

The third and perhaps most bizarre stream features the Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.) or The Wheelchair Assassins, a French Canadian separatist group who wish to obtain a master copy of Infinite Jest to use as a weapon. This quest to find Infinite Jest binds together the three streams. As the novel progresses they become more involved, including a brilliant sequence in which they raid a shop and search it for the master copy of Infinite Jest; with some of them climbing the walls using suction cups on their stumps, which typically for Infinite Jest is both disturbing and hilarious simultaneously.

Infinite Jest is an utterly original novel and Wallace’s singular style makes a virtue of extreme detail and digression. Wallace’s style is so densely rendered that initially it can be almost impenetrable, requiring great commitment and concentration on behalf of the reader. The narrative form is fragmented across both time and place and characters or events that initially appear to be minor end up being important elsewhere. A throwaway comment by a character or a few sentences in a random paragraph often act as vectors towards understanding the overall plot arc. Unusually for a work of fiction there are over three hundred endnotes (some with their own footnotes), many of which are pages long and are of particular importance to understanding the novel. To read Infinite Jest requires that the reader push beyond their standard passive reading paradigm and actively engage with the novel on its own terms. 

Like the fatal film itself, Infinite Jest is addictive. After a while I realised that I was beginning to think in the style of Wallace’s writing in my everyday life, which fortunately was not such a bad thing. Once you adjust to the digressions, complexity and the multitude of characters the novel becomes a total pleasure to read. The highlights are manifold, such as Mario’s first and only romantic encounter (Mario is a macrocephalic), Hal’s visit to a supposed marijuana addicts recovery group session, Ennet House resident Lenz’s sick nocturnal habits and his drug addled raves; what transpires when Hal comes home and enjoys the smell of dinner cooking, and the tragicomic account of a man’s addiction to watching M.A.S.H that takes him over the edge. 

Towards the end stalwart Ennet House resident Don Gately’s past, present and future becomes entangled in the metaphysical meaning behind what is on the Infinite Jest film. Yes, you do find out what is on the film and it is totally satisfying both metaphysically and intellectually. It is not merely a throwaway plot device and makes perfect sense when the principle reasons behind many of the characters problems with addiction are considered and then applied to the population in general. Most of them have an emotional void created during childhood that they are desperately trying to fill. There is a satisfying existential depth to Infinite Jest that Wallace has pulled off with aplomb. 

Infinite Jest manages to be everything you would want from a great novel, brilliantly realized ideas, intellectually satisfying, mysterious, multilayered and most importantly, profound in its humanity. Wallace himself suffered both from depression and drug addiction (he also played tennis) and to know his story helps to understand where Infinite Jest is coming from. The novel is this era’s Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922) and will keep academics and university students busy for decades to come. One last word of advice, to understand how the plot resolves you will need to pay particular attention to the beginning, which is set during a time after the narrative finishes. Another option is to submit to the pull of addiction and read Infinite Jest again and again and again.....

Above Image:Jonathan Franzan and David Foster Wallace 1996 at the launch of Infinite Jest (Photo by Marina Garnier)

Infinite Jest, Ted Gioia and the Fragmented Novel

Recently I’ve had bit of time to play around with and I decided to reattempt reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), an enormous tome I had long ago abandoned after only a third had been read. I’m making good headway and most importantly I’m enjoying the experience. So stay tuned for a review – eventually.

The nature of Infinite Jest has led me to do a bit of reading about trends in literature and I stumbled across a brilliant essay written by Ted Gioia about the rise of the fragmented novel. It is well worth reading and helps put into perspective many significant novels of the last ten years or so, such as Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) and Roberto Bolano’s 2666 (2004).

Ted Gioia is an author, musician and cultural theorist. His biography is well worth checking out, as is the list of essays at the bottom of the linked page. Gioia has written much-lauded books about Jazz, but the one I’m most interested in is The Birth (and the Death) of Cool (2009), which is:

…a work of cultural criticism and a historical survey of hipness—his concept of post-cool, outlined in this work, was highlighted as one of the "ideas of the year" by Adbusters

Sounds pretty cool to me! One day when I finally finish Infinite Jest I’ll get around to reading it. Meanwhile Gioia has also written an essay on Infinite Jest – something to be going on with then.

Artwork pictured: Fragments by Henie

Canada – Richard Ford (2012)

Richard Ford is best known for his novel The Sportswriter, his 1985 story of a failed novelist turned sportswriter who is faced with the deep crisis of a dead son. Its sequel – Independence Day (1995) won the Pulitzer Prize. Ford is also a noted short story writer and has been seen as being part of the Dirty Realism school of writing along with such writers as Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers and of course the great Charles Bukowski.

Not having even read a single word of Ford’s writing previously, I came to Canada as a total Ford novice, absolutely free from any knowledge or opinion. My first impression was that Ford is a writer of nuance and craft, taking his time to build the plot and reveal his characters. At first I appreciated this and warmed to the fifteen year old Dell Parsons, who narrates the novel retrospectively from the vantage point of retirement. Dell lives with his twin sister, Berner and their parents Bev (the broad shouldered ex-airman) and the frustrated Jewish would be intellectual Neeva. It’s a sad grey world of isolation and confusion for Dell and Berner and it slowly becomes apparent that there is a deep psychological element to Canada that is perhaps more evident in hindsight. The motivations of Dell’s parents are murky at best, even to Dell himself, who comes across as a bewildered innocent.

With a narrative pace bordering on catatonic Dell recounts his dysfunctional family life and the events that lead up to his parents robbing a bank. During this long first part Ford’s measured and meticulous style becomes repetitive and Dell’s repeated ruminations about the psychology of his parents decision making leading up to the robbery becomes tedious. When the robbery occurs it’s an anticlimax and the inevitable consequences take forever to arrive; squandering any tension generated by events leading up to Dell’s parents arrest. I’m giving nothing away here due to the fact that nearly every major event in Canada is revealed well in advance (from the first line!), which turns out to be a fatal flaw.

The second part finds Dell deposited in a small town in Canada by a friend of Neeva to avoid the long reach of the authorities. Initially the shift to Canada brings the novel alive, particularly when Dell meets the louche Charley Quarters. Charley provides a much-needed presence, with his seedy manner, penchant for lipstick, rouge and poetry. Dell finds himself marginalized, living in an overflow shack away from the main hotel in a one-horse town that survives due to geese hunters visiting from America. Suddenly the reader’s interest is revived and the pathos of Dell’s situation hits home. But once again any tension generated is wasted when the dodgy character of hotelier Arthur Remlinger comes to the fore, with his oblique character traits that fascinate Dell so much and his semi-interesting back-story as a political radical. There is a climax of sorts, when Remlinger has to deal with his past catching up with him, but its execution is fumbled and it merely becomes just another event witnessed at a remove.

A strange ambivalence permeates this novel; it’s difficult to connect with the characters lives due to Ford’s ponderous style and Dell’s monochrome recollections. There are long sections that you could only describe as being dull, which is frustrating because there is a sense of something deeper lurking there, something that speaks of the dark vagaries of human existence. Dell is fascinated with chess and bee keeping, two seemingly disparate pastimes which actually represent his subconscious need for order in his life which is at the mercy of the capriciousness of wayward adults. If the prose had been more vital and there had been more interest generated by the tension of not knowing what was going to come next then such deeper aspects of Canada would have far more import. Ford can certainly write, as his reputation suggests, however the novel is a disappointment, which is a shame really. 

The Lighthouse – Alison Moore (2012)

It has been such a long time since I actually read this book that I considered not reviewing it at all, but for various reasons The Lighthouse has stayed with me, so I decided to write about it in brief anyway. The Lighthouse is Alison Moore’s debut novel and is notable for the fact that it made the shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, therefore gaining this slight novel some serious attention.

The Lighthouse is the story of a middle-aged man called Futh, who embarks on a walking holiday in Germany after the dissolution of his marriage. Unfortunately for Futh he embodies the term ‘absolute loser’ and is an almost completely unlikable character. During his circular ramble though the German countryside his bathetic past is thoroughly picked through and it makes for very bleak reading indeed. Futh’s life was initially blighted by being abandoned by his mother, only to be left with his insipid father, who then went on to have one soulless affair after another. Pretty much all of the supporting characters are both dysfunctional and unlikable. I wouldn’t recommend The Lighthouse as a holiday read, unless you particularly enjoy the psychology of human dysfunction.

The fact that The Lighthouse in an entirely depressing narrative does not particularly worry me, it is the fact that it made the Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2012 and has been lauded for its “serious” qualities. The novel does deal with the important theme of how past traumas can shape the future. It is also a precisely pieced together narrative – something akin to a literary jigsaw puzzle with everything ultimately linked to each other. Unfortunately The Lighthouse also suffers from having its internal mechanisms being entirely visible. There are a multitude of all too obvious literary devices used throughout the narrative, all of which could have been either omitted or used with more subtlety.  Within its pages we have lighthouses, moths and that old chestnut the Venus Fly-Trap as all too apparent metaphors. Futh’s circular route through the German countryside, taking him back to the guesthouse he started out from (called Hellhaus – meaning lighthouse in German, sigh…) is a clichéd analogy for the dysfunctional eternal return of his life. The most unoriginal metaphor occurs when Futh meets his childhood ‘friend’ at the supermarket and ends up buying a bun that he had handled, complete with a fingerprint - a heavy-handed metaphor for the fact that Futh’s friend was sleeping with his wife.

The Lighthouse is perfect fodder for book clubs, so much so there is even a page on Alison Moore’s website containing questions for book-clubbers. My book club groups (26 members) almost universally pondered over the fact that the book is so highly regarded when they struggled to be engaged with the characters and found the narrative to be obvious and unrelentingly bleak without much reward. After all, this book was short-listed for the Man booker Prize along with the winner – Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies and such writers as the super erudite literary freak Will Self.

This brings us to the question of the worth of literature prizes such as the Man Booker. Mantel’s two winning novels are certainly worthy, but what about the truly excruciating The Finkler Question that won a few years ago – the worst book I’ve ever read? That book still haunts me and I feel like my psyche has been damaged in an insidious way. I’ve heard whispers that judges shirk reading the books, passing the task onto underlings for assessment. I’ve also been told that a former judge revealed in an interview that often the judges are so deadlocked on deciding he final winner that the only compromise is to give the award to a lesser book.

Perhaps the most interesting issue to think about is whether literature awards are actually good for authors and the industry as a whole. With everyone so fixated on awards perhaps many worthy authors and books are overlooked, with undeserving novels getting unwarranted attention whilst the more deserving fall by the wayside. There’s a rich tapestry of literature out there, far more than what appear on award long-lists. So are awards worth our attention? Or are do they create an illusion of quality and are more about the powerful sway of the market? I’m undecided – the jury’s out so to speak, but these days I’m feeling less inclined to read award-winning novels and I’m pretty sure my book club members are too.

1Q84 – Haruki Murakami (2009 -10 / 2011 English translation)

I finally got around to reading 1Q84 after probably just about every other Murakimi fan in the English-speaking world had already read it. Like Murakami’s prose, I’m not in that much of a hurry usually. The publication of 1Q84 in English was a huge event, just as it had been in Japan - such is the impact Murakami has on literature culture. Murakami deserves the attention because one of the great things about his writing is that when you first discover him you can feel invigorated by his unique sensibility and style. 1Q84 certainly has its share of such quality moments, but unfortunately it also suffers from over familiarity and a sense of over-stretching on the author’s part.

1Q84 was published as three books in one – a huge 925 pages of pure Murakami. This is both its strength and its weakness. To try and describe the plot of 1Q84 is perhaps folly; fortunately it is enough to know that it contains most of Murakami’s typical tropes and obsessions. Once again Murakami has set a book in the 1980’s and I wonder why he is so fixated with this period. Perhaps it represents a lost ‘innocent’ era when the web didn’t exist, there were very few mobile phones, vinyl records still sold in their millions and pop music was arguably far less cynical and self conscious.

1Q84 bears all the hallmarks of Murakami’s distinctive style. The narrative quite often has a glacial pace, with plenty of nuance and space. There is also the usual peculiar attention to mundane details about the character’s lives, such as what they eat, and how they prepare their food. Sometimes I wonder if Murakami has Aspergers Syndrome, such is his obsessive attention to detail! Logically it’s more likely that it is a device that helps build tension between the ordinary and the preternatural.

Typically for a Murakami narrative both the main protagonists are in their early 30’s. This is a symbolic age for Murakami characters – an in between age; too old to be innocent and yet too young to be wise. Aomame is a distinctly strange woman, an ex member of a religious cult turned murderess. Tengo is a writer, teacher and is one of Murakami’s lonely men. For all 1Q84’s strangeness it is essentially a love story between these two characters. Their connection is interwoven into the plot, acting as a counterpoint to the obtuse weirdness that percolates through their otherwise every-day lives.

Another hallmark of Murakami’s writing is his tendency to have unresolved narrative arcs, and there’s plenty on offer here. 1Q84 is a mysterious novel and the more you try and make sense of it the more it slips away. But it is useful to remember that Murakami still flies the flag for post-modernism and there are multiple interpretations of 1Q84 that could all be equally valid.

As much as I love Murakami’s writing I found 1Q84 to be a frustrating experience. The first book lures you in with Aomeme’s literal descent into an alternate reality in which two moons hang in the sky. Then there is the mystery of the Air Chrysalis book written by Fuka-Eri, a member of a cloistered mountain cult. Tengo and Aomame are trapped in the realm of the Little People, a place that Aomeme calls 1Q84.

The second book maintains a disturbing tension. We watch helplessly as Tengo’s life becomes compromised by unexplained events. Aomeme works towards fulfilling her destiny as a bringer of justice. New characters are introduced, such as Ushikawa, a sinister man with an ugly oversized bobble – like head. The mystery of the Little People deepens. The second book is vintage Murakami  - weird and strangely compelling despite the slow motion narrative.

The third book is left with the job of tying up all the loose ends leftover from the first two, but then does its best to leave mysteries unexplained and plotlines unresolved. The main problem with the third book is that the protagonists spend inordinate amounts of time holed up contemplating their situation. The normally glacial pace is slowed even further and finishing 1Q84 becomes a matter of tenacity on the part of the reader. Unfortunately the ending is, well, disappointing. For a book that demands such a huge investment in time it’s a pity that 1Q84’s endgame lacks tension and is almost unapologetically banal.

Normally I don’t draw attention to the rating system I use, but 1Q84 is essentially three books published as one. The first book borders on being excellent, but I’ll give it an admirable rating. The second book is excellent and I wish that Murakami had wrapped it up then and there. The third book is mediocre due to its slow pace, lack of tension and an unsatisfactory resolution. Murakami will shortly have a new novel published, so I’m hoping that it will be a return to form because despite my relative disappointment, he’s still worth reading.

Crossing to Safety - Wallace Stegner (1987)

Crossing to Safety became a literary hit of sorts in Australia in 2012 when the First Tuesday Book Club panel unanimously praised it. All of the initial 2012 edition copies sold out around Australia and this tale of the friendship between two couples became a talking point at book clubs everywhere. I'd never heard of Wallace Stegner and I suspect that he had not made much of an impact in Australia during his lifetime. Stegner was an ardent environmentalist and an academic, and he combined the two to make a lasting impact on the way America thought about its wilderness areas. Stegner is known for his writings set in the American West and he published novels, non-fiction and essays between 1937 and 1992 before his untimely death in a car accident.

Crossing to Safety was Stegner’s last novel published in his lifetime and it is fittingly written from the perspective of old age. The narrator, Larry Morgan, looks back over fifty years of friendship with the Lang’s – Sid and Charity. They meet whilst teaching at university in the 1930’s and from the vantage point of the early 1970’s Larry contemplates the vicissitudes of their shared lives.

Crossing to Safety is a classy novel. Stegner’s prose is subtle, poised and flows like a gentle stream over rounded rocks. Relationships and friendships are standard fare in literature, but Stegner manages to offer a fresh perspective. His characters are authentic and well drawn and over-all the narrative is refreshing straightforward. Larry’s wife, Sally, is perhaps underrepresented, however this is mainly because Charity is such a strong presence throughout, leaving Sally to be more of a counterpoint.

As the novel progresses Stegner focuses mainly on the lives of the four characters and only alludes to historical events in passing. The characters’ individual triumphs and struggles are not presented as a microcosm of the wider historical perspective; instead Stegner’s themes are far more existential. In perhaps the only nod to post-modernism in the novel, the good hearted yet controlling Charity suggests to Sid that he should attempt to write a novel about ordinary peoples’ lives, rather than one contrived to be dramatic. Crossing to Safety is, of course, that novel. However Stegner cleverly and subtly brings in the universal existential struggle of humanity during a segment set in Italy. As the couples take in the artistic wonders of Italy Sid notes a certain look in the eyes of the men portrayed in the paintings of the renaissance greats. Then soon after Sid notes that same look in a simple laborer who has damaged his hand in an accident. A man in pain and anguish, yet who is proud and defiant and all the more human for it. This is Stegner’s wider theme; something we all share that is not confined to the movements of history but is universal. Does this mean that the title is ironic? That there is no safety to cross to, only a constant struggle? Perhaps, but I’d rather believe that it is defiant.

It is tempting to see Crossing to Safety as highly autobiographical, however Stegner remarked in an interview that he took cues from his own life, added the lives of others and fragmented it amongst his own creative license. This is no doubt a technique shared among many writers and it works well. The great thing about Stegner’s writing is that you can’t see the joins – his style is seamless.

What the novel does share with ‘real life’ is some of the mundanety of day-to-day living. Whilst I wouldn’t go as far as suggesting that the novel has mundane sections, it does sag a bit in the middle. The narrator mentions that there would be no bed hopping in this book, as if all effort must be made to avoid it from becoming a John Updike novel. But there can be a price to pay for this stance and Crossing to Safety skirts close for a while. Fortunately there is the payoff of the emotionally intense ending that is both psychologically revealing and extremely moving. The novel is worth reading for this alone, but there are many highlights throughout, all of which leads me to conclude that Stegner’s wider body of work would be well worth investigating in the future

Iain [M] Banks

Today one of my colleagues at work told me that Iain Banks has terminal cancer and only has a matter of months to live. I was incredulous and deeply saddened by the news. A writer of rare ability, Banks has had two careers side by side. As Iain M. Banks he has been one of the greatest science fiction writers of the last twenty-five years or so. His Culture novels revealed Banks to be one of the most imaginative and playful writers in the genre.

As Iain Banks he has published literature, with a string of quality releases beginning with the left of centre classic The Wasp Factory in 1984. This was my first introduction to the brilliance of his writing and I still talk to people about that book today. However I’m more familiar with the Iain M Banks side of the story, with Use of Weapons (1990), Against a Dark Background (1993) and Look to Windward (2000) standing out as favorites.

Banks will be greatly missed, but he’s leaving behind an impressive body of work and for that he should feel satisfied. Thanks Iain, I’ve loved your books and I wish you a good end to this part of your story.

You can read Iain’s post about his illness and leave a message if you wish on his website here.

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace (1996)

The ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club was televised, funnily enough, last Tuesday, and they ended by revealing that they would read and talk about Infinite Jest in next month’s show. I inwardly groaned because so far this book has defeated me. I bought it a few years back and initially I enjoyed both the style and the premise, but then I became bogged down and finally halted completely. I’m languishing on page 420, half way through 30 April / 1 May Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (this will make sense if you try and read it).

The late David Foster Wallace was an adherent of the so-called hysterical realism style, which basically involves over the top prose that is all encompassing in its attention to detail regarding plot, characters and the minutia of the everyday and the not so everyday. Basically you are up for pages and pages of detail spent on one issue or subject, during which any number of tangents is not nearly enough. Well, this is my interpretation anyway.

The premise is suitably intriguing, complex and amazing. Infinite Jest is party focused on teenage tennis players at a sport-focused American college and partly on the patients at a drug rehab centre. It also involves a video that is so entertaining that the people watching it will starve to death and defecate where they sit rather than stop watching. Oh and it also seems to be set either in the near future or in an alternative present, I can’t quite work out which.

So the question is - should I attempt to finish this book that is sometimes tedious and sometimes brilliant? Has anyone else had the same problem? Or is Infinite Jest a work of genius and I’m simply not up to its challenges? I know from briefly researching the book online that it undoubtedly has its admirers and that it is perhaps the ultimate cult book of our times. This is all very well, but I still can’t get enthused about finishing it. Perhaps I should just get on with it; after all, I kind of want to know what’s on that videotape.

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco (1980)

Umberto Eco is a true Italian renaissance man, a semiotician, novelist, children’s author, critic, philosopher and author of non-fiction and essays. He also collects books and apparently has some 50,000 in his collection, including 1200 rare editions. Now that’s what I call a passionate bibliophile! The Name of Rose is definitely his most well known book, having sold some 26 million copies since its publication in 1980. Eco is an academic who has caught the imagination of the reading public the world over.

With The Name of the Rose Eco has created a highly credible medieval world in which fiction and fact are interwoven. This can be heavy going and there are on occasions long sections that deal with papal politics, heretical sects and monkish philosophy, all of which tests the reader’s resolve. Despite this the novel also has political and philosophical themes that have strong relevance today. You could even argue that the book has an uncanny prescient quality thirty-three years on, with its examination of the nature of truth, freedom, intolerance and the sometimes-uneasy relationship between church and state.

The central protagonists are William of Baskerville, a monk who values rationality rather than faith, and his novice assistant Adso of Melk, who also acts as the narrator. William and Adso appear to be playful allusions to Holmes and Watson, that other famous sleuthing pair. William and Adso are finely drawn protagonists who are both humane and complex. But as a murder mystery the book was unfortunately lost for me, due to viewing the movie version many years ago. This, at least, allowed me to enjoy how Eco manipulates the reader, spinning a web of diversions and blind alleys to obscure the truth, which is in any case very well hidden in more ways than one. As a murder mystery the novel is certainly compelling, however your average murder mystery fan will find it hard going.

The Name of the Rose is five hundred pages of dense narrative that will challenge even the most determined fan of literature. I did struggle despite having studied medieval history, but ultimately I enjoyed the novel. Eco is certainly a fine writer. The complex plot and the characterizations are his great strengths, although the pacing is sluggish on occasions, suffering from the burden of medieval detail. The descriptions of the monastery and the labyrinthine library are detailed and genuinely atmospheric. One of the best passages involves Adso becoming lost in reverie as he describes the carvings on the doors of the church, leading me to the conclusion that medieval art attempted to do what cinema does so readily in the modern age – to take people elsewhere and nourish the imagination.

Ostensibly a medieval murder mystery, the novel also examines the meta relationship between narratives, how they feed into each other and also how they blend with the ‘real life’ narratives of the humans who read them, in this case scared apocalyptic fourteenth century monks. About half way through the novel, after William and Adso have already ventured through the library labyrinth (a highlight of the novel), they ruminate on the nature of books, how “Often books speak of other books.” In The Name of the Rose Eco does indeed speak of other books, with many references to ancient books, real, lost and perhaps even fabricated by Eco himself. Books and the stories they tell are the key to understanding this complex murder mystery. Keep that in mind when reading and you’ll have a chance of solving the mystery yourself.

Blending medieval history with a murder mystery has certainly worked for Eco in terms of capturing readers’ imaginations, but I wonder just how many people have actually finished the book? I know of at least two people who have had up to four attempts at completing it. If you are interested, but can’t face up to the long medieval interludes, perhaps try the movie, or even the board game. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

The Transit of Venus – Shirley Hazzard (1980)

Shirley Hazzard is one of those writers who can skirt the borders of literary pretension and get away with it due to her beautiful writing style and her subtle skill with narrative form. Hazzard also has a splendid way of making an obtuse plot inviting, making The Transit of Venus a master class of highly literate writing that even those who feel most comfortable with so called genre novels can easily read and enjoy.

Hazzard is an Australian ex-pat who left the country in 1947 at the age of sixteen and as far as I can ascertain has never returned. She began the life of a writer in the early 1960’s when she submitted a short story that she’d written for her own enjoyment to The New Yorker and it was published. Since then there has been short story collections, non-fiction and four novels. Although Hazzard is not prolific, there was a gap of twenty-three years between Transit and The Great Fire (2003); she makes up for it with her sheer class.

The Transit of Venus is, on the surface, a story about two orphaned Australian sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, who end up living in 1950’s England. The narrative takes place over four decades and follows their lives and, most significantly, their relationships. Love, with all its triumphs and tragedies, is central to the novel. Caroline has many suitors but it is her unrequited relationship with the long-suffering Astronomer Edmund Tice that gives the novel romantic tension. Using the actual transit of Venus as an analogy for the vagaries of romance, Hazzard milks it for all it’s worth. She suggests that like trying to observe the transit of Venus, you need to be in the right place at the right time to succeed romantically.

Thematically The Transit of Venus tackles not just the nature of love, but also gender politics, class, wartime morality and personal duplicity. One of the strengths of the novel is Hazzard’s skill in bringing the time period of the 1950’s to the 1980’s alive. The narrative is a superb blend of the personal and the historical, each complimenting the other. There’s a great sequence in which she describes a multitude of women across 1950’s London waking up and preparing them-selves for a day’s work. These women represent the vanguard of working women who weren’t going to waste the gender gains of WWII.

Hazzard’s pose is dazzling, sophisticated and beautiful, allowing a special kind of engagement between the reader and the narrative to develop. At times I felt enraptured by her writing and as the novel unfolded the strength and subtlety of the plot became readily apparent. Hazzard also drops a few strong hints about how the novel ends early on and if you pay attention you will understand the ending, otherwise you may be in for a re-read.

Hazzard’s characters have a certain cold complexity, particularly Caroline, who maneuvers through her relationships with a subtle cold detachment. Caroline’s sister, Grace, mostly serves to underline the gender trap of domesticity, although she does take the lead in a section filled with frustrated romantic yearnings. Her husband, Christian Thrale, represents middle-class public servant small-mindedness, something Hazzard herself was familiar with having worked for the United Nations.

I first read this novel way back in 1994 for a university unit on Australian literature and it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of highly literate fiction. My prior reading habits mainly included cult novels and science fiction. Hazzard, with one novel, inspired me to move outside my comfort zone and for that I’m grateful. Recently I read an interview with Hazzard in the Guardian from 2006 and I realized that my conversion was no coincidence. She has this to say about literature:

"The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature. I feel that people are more unhappy, in an unrealised way, for not having these things in their lives: not being able to express something, or to profit from somebody else having expressed it. It can be anything but it's always, if it's supreme, an exaltation."

To me this perfectly sums up just why fiction is just as important, if not more so, than non-fiction when it comes to guiding us through this weird universe we find ourselves in. Read The Transit of Venus and you’ll find out just why.