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.

The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book

Books made from actual paper - a thing of the past?

Over on the ABC news site there's an article entitled - "Australian publishers say the book is not dead, it is being redefined by new technology." So, E-books and E-reading devices are really gaining a significant foothold in the book market. This is totally unsurprising, if a little dispiriting. I'm certainly not a fan of E-readers, as you can read here, but I accept that it is inevitable that they will become the dominant paradigm in publishing. However like vinyl records have survived, I believe that books will also. 

Bookstores will need to adapt, become more specialized and offer quality over quantity. Book chains, as we have already seen, will become a thing of the past and small boutique stores will become the norm. There will be plenty of people who will still want to browse for books in the physical sense as well as read a book made from paper. I know that I will. So what do you think?

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.