In the one life are many lives. Alternative lives. Some are lived and others imagined. That is the absurdity of biographies he would say, of novels
In the one life are many lives. Alternative lives. Some are lived and others imagined. That is the absurdity of biographies he would say, of novels. They never take account of the alternative lives casting their shadows over us as we move slowly, as though in a dream, from birth to maturity to death
Now longlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
This book is published by the UK small press Carnacet, “Now in its fifth decade, Carcanet publishes the most comprehensive and diverse list available of modern and classic poetry in English and in translation, as well as a range of inventive fiction, Lives and Letters and literary criticism”
And is written by Gabriel Josipovici – whose own literary output includes “sixteen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays” as well as regular articles in the TLS.
He was a judge in the inaugural year of the Goldsmith Prize – alongside the novelist Nicola Barker, and with the latter winning the prize itself in 2017 now, with his shortlisting for the 2018 prize, has the possibility to join her.
The author has said that the book came to him as an intense feeling that he wanted to describe and explore in fiction, and then an opening line.
The feeling was of a man walking down a delightful country road but with the sense that at any moment he could fall into a huge abyss.
The first line was: "He had been living in Paris for many years. Longer, he used to say, than he cared to remember"
So (in the author's words): a very simple set up; the idea that perhaps a second voice is reporting on the stories the first used to tell; a hint in the phrasing used that the "he" is old-fashioned, prissy and formal; an element of uncertainty and shadow.
The book therefore opens with an unidentified narrator, recounting how a second, unnamed, man talked of his life in Paris. That man moved there after the death of his first wife in England and is working as a translator (of identikit genre novels whose paucity depresses him) in a small apartment in the streets behind the Pantheon – discussing the routine of his daily life including his afternoon tea ritual.
The style is gentle and the story seems simple, but after only two pages a third voice joins:
Sometimes you also went to concerts, his wife - his second wife - would interrupt him. And he seemed to need these interruptions, was adept at incorporating them into his discourse, using them as stepping stones to the development of his theme.
And we are in Wales - “a converted farmhouse in the Black Mountains high up above Abergavenny”- and the narration appears to be being told to friends visiting the couple there, the second wife’s voice and that of the main voice acting in counterpoint and our third voice perhaps one of the close friends who visited them there and listened as the translator reminisces on his time in Paris – his tale by now as well as the bantering interactions with his wife by now seemingly well-rehearsed.
And then two pages later, as the recollections start to circle round, what seemed to me the first anomaly in the tale emerged – on one level a minor one (suddenly he is taking his tea early in the morning) and possibly not even an anomaly (perhaps he also drank tea with breakfast as well as at tea) but enough to cast doubts in my mind (his Paris routine seems so fixed, his description if it so precise, its conventionality – morning coffee, lunchtime sandwich and beer, afternoon tea, bistro dinner – so prescribed, that any departure is immediately odd).
And suddenly we are into the world of unreliable narration – perhaps an overfamiliar trope in literature but done in a much more subtle way here.
The translator continues to reminisce in Wales, both of his time in Paris, and increasingly also of his life with his first wife in the suburbs of South West London.
Threaded through are his perambulations around both areas, including local cemeteries. Artistic elements start to emerge and are incorporate in the text, as he reproduces the Italian libretto of Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, and the French poetry of Joachim du Pellay's Le Regrets, as well as his attempts to render both into English; plus the sonnets of Shakespeare's “Venus and Adonis from 1593 and his thoughts on how to translate from the English.
As an aside – these parts were my least favourite on my first read of the novel – the person I second most identified with in the novel was the second wife “I’m so uneducated, she would say. When I met him I thought a saraband was something you wore around your waist” . The first clearly being the Marxist student he fails to tutor in London (“I’m going to Cambridge. They make you think in Cambridge, in Oxford they only make you read books” ).
I was very much reminded of my reservations about the Goldsmith shortlisted “The Long Take”. I really don’t like French poetry or Italian opera any more than I like Film Noir and Jazz; and much as I like Paris I don’t really want a list of Paris street names/districts anymore than a list of Los Angeles streets/districts; and a list of the names of people buried in cemeteries is about as interesting as a list of film directors.
However just as the second wife repeatedly emphasises that her tastes and appreciation for the arts has been refined by her husband, I found on a second read that I gained a greater appreciation of the relevance of the opera and poetry to the themes of the book.
Gabriel Josipovici has said that Orfeo is “crucially for my novel, a profound exploration of the story of Oprheus and Eurydice, loss and the impossibility of retrieval”
You are dead, oh my life, and I breathe on? You have left me Never to return and I remain No…
And of Bellay I saw the importance of ...
“By talking to his absent friends, du Bellay begins to understand who he is. Without them there would have been no Regrets. Without them he would have remained mute. For you never talk to yourself. You have to have another to talk to, even when you are alone”
I enjoyed the threefold aspect to the book – three voices, three languages, three countries and three pieces of art.
More anomalies emerge – for example translations of stanzas are reproduced but with minor alterations: again not on the face of it that odd, but odd given the precision of the initial translation and the pains taken to reproduce the sense of the ancient French in English. A seemingly important couple who visit the Welsh farmhouse swap their washing up/tiding up roles within pages.
And further what first seems an unremarkable life and retelling has elements which are anything but: an almost magic realism style encounter in a Paris bar; a scar of uncertain provenance but great significance; a sexual encounter by the Seine; what initially could be optimistically viewed as the loving observation of his wife from a distance but soon turns into sinister stalking; his wife falling into the Thames; an obsession in Paris with visions of drowning and in Wales with a fire he and his second wife observed.
“Unlike later opera composers, Monteverdi did not pause and repeat himself for emphasis but let his music, like life itself, move on”
But the narrator and translator take a third approach – pausing often, circling around, repeating himself but not to achieve emphasis, in fact precisely its opposite – creating doubt and uncertainty as different elements of the stories seem to metamorphosis over time.
In fact the threefold idea resurfaces again – we have three apparent versions of various incidents which range from the mundane:
Did the translator first borrow du Pellay’s regrets from a London library and renew on many occasions until embarrassed into buying a copy; did he re-read it many times on the first borrowing and buy his own copy before returning it the first time: or did he in fact first encounter it in a Seine quayside book stall? Even did he open the book in the library and know immediately it was the book for him, or take it home unopened and not knowing what to expect?
To the sinister:
Did his first wife survive her fall into the water, or did she later die of a chill/pneumonia induced by the fall, or did she actually drown (and if she did was it an accident or a push that induced the fall).
Was the Welsh fire of someone else’s barn and just witnessed by the translator and his second wife; was it their own house and both survived and were questioned by the police on who could have caused the fire; or did in fact the man’s second wife and a second person die in the fire? Other anomalies and mysteries are included:
Is a London encounter with a girl in a café actually with his first wife. Is the Seine side sexual encounter with his second wife? Why do people say his first wife and second are similar when they have different appearances (or do they?) and vastly different musical knowledge.
Who are the role swapping couple who linger to clear up in Wales – is one the narrator, is he having an affair with the second wife, is he part of the first wife’s musical quartet? Is he the other victim of the fire and did the narrator or the other half of the couple (his wife) start the fire?
And the book ends, where it spends most of its brief sojourn in our memory, in gentle but chilling ambiguity.
One sprouts so many lives, he would say, and look at her and smile. One is a murderer. One an incendiary. One a suicide. One lives in London. One in Paris. One in New York”
(itself a quote narrowly changed from the first rendering earlier in the book – the insertion of incendiary, the substitution of New York for Bombay – the re-ordering of the cities)
Is that a key to the book – the translator having killed his first wife and burnt his second home, perhaps commits suicide (or attempted it earlier in Paris – hence the scar): is the ultimate narrator now living with the second wife in New York, their affair having become official – or is the translator living with his now third wife - the theme of three reappearing once more.
Or is some of the book, perhaps even the whole book simply imagined by the lonely narrator in Paris, consider the quote about Bellay above and his “conversations” with his absent friends.
Further early on in the book we read: Steps are conducive to fantasy, he would say. Going up and down lets the mind run free.
And the book concludes: “With his grey hat pulled low over his eyes he climbs the stairs out of the rue Saint Julien”
None of this is a spoiler in my view – as this is a book which is all about ambiguity and uncertainty and not around resolution. And speaking to the author at the Goldsmith readings he emphatically confirmed that there is no correct interpretation - and that he does not have one himself.
Overall a fascinating novella. On my first reading I concluded it was though one which I think would have been a fantastic shorter story (perhaps with less translation and tadophilia).
But on a second reading I think it makes an amazing novella also – remarkable for how much of life is contained in such a slim volume, or as the translator says of Du Bellay
“It was the quiet precision in the writing and profound despair in what was being written about that never failed to move him …… despair and love and resignation all yoked together in fourteen lines ..”
Perhaps in line with the theme of the book - to really appreciate it a third reading is needed....more
This is a book about immediacy and Twitter, so it seems appropriate that the day after I read it, I saw via a tweet that it had been nominated for theThis is a book about immediacy and Twitter, so it seems appropriate that the day after I read it, I saw via a tweet that it had been nominated for the 2018 Goldsmith Prize. I have subsequently re read the book.
It was uncomputable, it was the province of the novel, that hopeless apparatus of guesswork and supposition, with which Kathy liked to have as little traffic as possible. She wrote fiction, sure, but she populated it with the already extant, the pre packaged and ready made. She was in many ways Warhol’s daughter, niece at least, a grave robber, a bandit, happy to snatch what she needed but also morally invested in the cause; that there was no need to invent, you could make anything from out of the overflowing midden of the already done, The as Beckett out it nothing new, it was economic also stylish to help yourself to the grab bag of the actual.
In the Summer of 2017 the non-fiction author, art critic and gender-fluid Olivia Laing went on a luxury holiday to Italy with the poet Ian Patterson, twenty years her senior and soon to be her husband (much to her surprise as she has assumed a solitary life and indeed written about loneliness is her best know book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone).
There she:
Struggled with the concept of intimacy and companionship and her upcoming wedding - a wedding whose planning was looking through pictures on Instagram and making unkind comments
Followed via Twitter events, particularly in the US around Trump, the resurge of fascism and the alt-right;
Failed to make headway on a non-fiction book about bodies, violence and protest – partly as she felt a considered a thoughtful and reflective non-fiction book could simply not capture the chaos of world events that Summer;
Read, for a review, Chris Kraus’s biography of the punk writer Kathy Acker (After Kathy Acker: A Biography) and was inspired by the way in which Acker plagarised other people’s writings and lives;
Drank alcohol (the link between creativity and alcohol being the subject of her The Trip to Echo Spring);
Reflected on Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet – Ali Smith’s partner Sarah Wood being Olivia Laing’s cousin and Olivia Laing having written one of the widest quoted reviews and interviews around Autumn (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...) and the way in which it relies on the speeding up of publication process to capture near-contemporary events.
On August 1st, Laing, an inveterate contributor to as well as consumer of Twitter tweeted
Tipsy over dinner, I have come up with a quartet of novels which I am going to write in the first year of the next four decades
This is the first of those novels – written (other than in the opening two sentences Kathy, by which I mean I, was getting married. Kathy, by which I mean I, had just got off a plane from New York) in the third person voice of Kathy Acker – a Kathy Acker though who (despite her death years earlier) is living through the Summer of 2017 and who is copiously plagarising the life of Olivia Laing herself.
The novel was written in a raw form (hence the book’s title) on a daily basis over seven weeks – with minimal revisiting and editing, as Laing imagines how Acker might describe both her own life and feelings as well as the art (and articles about art) she consumes and how Acker might react to world events (of course based on how Laing herself is reacting) while Laing herself plagarises from Acker’s own life and writing.
Unlike Acker she sets out her sources in an extensive appendix, titled in a tip to the centrality of her marriage to the story “Something Borrowed” : the Blue of course being provided in Acker’s language, and the New and Old in the form of the novel itself, both innovative (the inside cover blurb claims Laing “rewires the novel”) and yet in the very tradition of a novel (a writer drawing on their own experience to write about others).
Certainly this is an interesting experiment and also with lots of small clever touches.
Just as one example in a digression on Diana
When she decided to leak her story, she couldn’t believe it was not possible for the book to be printed the next day, that’s pretty funny but also understandable thought Kathy, who had also railed over publishing lead times
A clear nod to the Ali Smith inspiration for the novel.
Or there is what initially seems a dig at Rachel Cusk as Kathy reads a New Yorker article about Cusk (albeit with Cusk or the New Yorker not identified in this book - but a quick Google search reveals the source and subject of the article) and her imaginary oral histories .. exquisitely attuned to the ways in which humans victimise each other. The article particularly annoys Kathy due to its trivial comparison of nuclear families to nuclear disaster, and Kathy goes on to decry the author’s (Cusk’s ) concentration on bourgeoisie lives.
However this apparent dig has, I think, to be reinterpreted given Laing’s own apparent appreciation of Cusk’s work, her borrowing from some of her techniques in this very novel, and her own comparison in this very book of the 2017 American/Korean nuclear tension to the (Game of Thrones) Red Wedding.
UPDATE: I am no longer sure this dig does have to be re-interpreted.
Offset against that though so much of the book appeared superficial – both in the incestuous, arty world it portrays and in the level of the analysis of world events. The inevitable comparison to Ali Smith’s quartet, while actively invited by Laing, do not I think reflect well on Laing's book on both counts.
At times the level of arty insularity and self absorption can be a little ridiculous. Set alongside a throaway treatment of some US political development which mainly consists of everyone checking their twitter feeds, we will then have the author Laing writing how the author Acker would react to an article the author Laing reads by another author commenting on a different author’s work
But ultimately that superficiality is I guess a key part of this book – which should perhaps be seen as Autumn/Winter written by and for the Twitter generation.
The last numbered page, in my copy at least, is page 140....more
I've travelled a fair bit. The Canadian Maritimes that's where I'm from. I know that coastline, down to Maine. I signed up, trained up in England, then I've travelled a fair bit. The Canadian Maritimes that's where I'm from. I know that coastline, down to Maine. I signed up, trained up in England, then fought in Normandy, then on through the low countries. Germany After the war I worked in New York City for eighteen months and now I'm here. I read all the time. Novels, history, I'm interested in films and jazz. Cities 'Cities'? 'Yes American Cities' 'What about American Cities' 'How they fail'
Now winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the 2018 Goldsmith Prize as well as shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize
The book being short listed for the Goldsmith lead me to re-read as a result but which did not really change my overall views of the book, which I think is very good but not brilliant (the second time through like the first I found myself skipping the parts which read like a Film Noir influenced tour of Los Angeles) and a surprise shortlistee for the Goldsmith as I think it lacked the innovation I associate with that prize.
In respect of the Man Booker however, it was deservedly the only one of the "wider" literary forms on the longlist (graphic novel, crime genre fiction) to make the shortlist.
And it is these features that have persuaded the Goldsmith judges to shortlist - they commented "A noir narrative written with the intensity and power of poetry, The Long Take is one of the most remarkable – and unclassifiable – books of recent years"
I should say up front that poetry and movies (of any type, let alone a specific area) are two art forms that do not really interest me - and the book even has some jazz music thrown in to complete, for me, an trinity of disinterest.
Further Los Angeles is not a City I have visited (or to be honest wish to visit) and this book is almost encyclopaedic at times in its description of the City in the post war years.
However despite that quadruple handicap I really enjoyed reading this book.
I was perhaps aided in this by a startling and vivid opening stanza, describing the third person narrators experience of sighting New York - a verse which captures an experience and reaction which applies equally 70+ years later and does not dim with repetition on what it is for me a monthly event crossing one of the bridges en route from JFK and catching a first glance at the City.
And there it was: the swell and glitter of it like a standing wave - the fabled, smoking ruin, the new towers rising through the blue the ranked array of ivory and gold, the glint, the glamour of buried life as the world turned around it
Our narrator is Walker, a name which captures rather too well his restless pedestrianism. He is a Canadian veteran of The D-Day landings, and feeling that his experiences and actions there disqualify him from returning to his previous life (and love) in Nova Scotia, decides instead to seek some form of anonymity in New York, before moving on to Los Angeles in 1948 where he finds work and some form of broken community, spending an interim period (1951-1953) in San Francisco before returning to Los Angeles where the book concludes in the next few years.
His experiences in all three cities are interleaved with prose flashbacks to his home in Nova Scotia (written despite their prose style with a poetic flourish)
The smell of stewed tea and wet clothes, smuts from the oil lamps, the valves in the radio like embers, glowing; the penetrating, nevertheless-ending rain - and winter, like a white door closing for six months .... Then the slow retreat of winter. Spring’s advent and reprieve.
and to his experiences in wartime France (written, not surprisingly, in a pared back unadorned style to suit their brutality).
The brief section in New York captures the City beautifully, and my favourite image and one I can relate to my regular evenings in Bryant Park when visiting the City for work, is of a lady reading a book
In the last splinter of sunlight allowed between the skyscrapers .... moving her chair every quarter of an hour
San Francisco is captured by
He doesn’t deserve this city its play of height and depth, this changing sift of colour and weather
But it is Los Angeles that dominates the story.
There he finds work as a newspaper writer, working on the City Desk - covering the increasingly brutal local crime scene. While he is in employment and accommodation, he finds himself drawn to Skid Row (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_...) and to the Cities homeless population of veterans, particularly coloured veterans.
His nighttime life is ambulatory, circling the City and watching its denizens, it’s constant cycle of destruction and incessant and insatiable development. He is a frequenter of the Cities bars, observing petty and organised crime, alcoholism and prostitution - these sections are where the Film Noir influence is heaviest and the strongest and recurring imagery is of the contrast of dark and light.
There were parts of the city that were pure blocks of darkness, where light would slip in like a blade to nick it, carve it open: a thin stiletto, then a spill of white; the diagonal gash of a shadow, shearing; the jagged angle sliding over itself to close; the flick-knife of a watchman’s torch, the long gasp of headlights from nowhere, their yawning light — then just as quickly their fading away: closed over, swallowed by the oiled, engraining, leaden dark.
He finds himself drawn to movie lots, outside scenes and to chatting to directors. In what was for me the least interesting part of the book there are copious references (detailed in the closing credits) to actual films, directors and scenes, as well as street by street, district by district detail of the City. Clearly the author has spent huge time on researching these parts and yet I found myself mentally skipping through them.
He persuades his boss to allow him to develop a sideline writing about this group and about the City zoning and expansion policies exacerbating their plight, against a background of Cold War hysteria and McCarthyism with the Korean War adding to the population of discarded and damaged veterans littering the Cities streets (and treated as litter by the Cities authorities in the pocket of property tycoons, crime and oil)
I mean the fact that this is country where there aren’t enough homes, enough jobs, where one in six Angelenos are ex-servicemen and they’re lying out on Skid Row - but all anyone ever talks about us waiting for the Russians, HUAC locking up half of Hollywood the government building more bombs We won’t he war, but we’re living like we lost
Walker we realise is suffering from PTSD and his memories of the war are triggered frequently, for example the July 4th fireworks in New York, the cacophony of construction sites in Los Angeles, the rolling fog in San Francisco.
On his return to Los Angeles, the by now constant destruction of the City to make way for new development, leads to almost constant flashbacks to the violence of the landings and the crimes he sees perpetuated on the City’s black population triggers memories of atrocities he witnessed in the Germans’ desperate last stand.
His own attempts to forget the war and his fond memories of a Nova Scotia to which he feels he can never return, are cleverly contrasted with the constant reinvention of Los Angeles
As he lay in bed, he saw that trying to forget was the same as trying to remember A lifetime's work, and damn near impossible He pulled out a smoke swallowed what was left in the heel of a bottle In cape Breton there was just the past Here in California, they're only thinking about the future - the past is being town down every day, so there's no past here to remember
Eventually his own memories of witnessing the massacre of his unarmed colleagues and his personal role in revenging that lead him to a downside spiral
In his room, he worked out where he’s been from the match books in his pocket, the drinks by the gap in his dollars, the hole in his life by his eyes in the broken mirror
And to closing lines which, drawing on the theme of contrast, are as dark to the light of the opening words
I can stop now he said putting his mouth to the mouth of the bottle “I’ll make my city here
Overall a memorable, powerful and impressive book, notwithstanding that the central Film Noir concept simply did not resonate for me.
My other criticism may I think, given their other choices, reflect exactly why the Booker judges longlisted it, which is a rather forced resonance with today’s events. I may be wrong but one paragraph of the book struck me as containing some anachronisms (although see the comments below).
This is our fear of ‘the other’ Indians, blacks, Mexicans, Communists, Muslims, whatever America has to have its monsters so we can zone them, segregate them if possible, shoot them They call this patriotism, Nativism but it’s racialism, pure and simple. And paranoia now that America’s gone abroad to fight a war - two wars we’re frightened, frightened that foreigners might come over here and do the same to us...more
Each of us were caught in the same swirl, all held together with our own small furies in this single mad, monstrous and lunatic city
Now in quick s
Each of us were caught in the same swirl, all held together with our own small furies in this single mad, monstrous and lunatic city
Now in quick succession winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and Jhalak Prize.
I re-read this book following its shortlisting for the 2018 Goldsmith Prize - something which caught me a little by surprise. I have augmented my review and upgraded my ranking - on reflection I think this is the book that could have deservedly won the Booker (and definitely should have been shortlisted) but the Goldsmith seems a stretch too far as it lacks the formal innovation I would expect from a Goldsmith shortlistee.
This debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker prize having been shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize one week earlier, and after having come to my attention as having been featured in a number of literary previews of 2018 at the start of the year.
The book is set in a North London (Neasden) housing estate (The Stones) some-time in the late 2000s and takes place over 48 hours, in the tinderbox atmosphere immediately after the murder of an off-duty/back-from-service soldier by a black man which has further inflamed the racial and religious tensions in the area which include a radicalised Muslim group based around the local mosque and a group of White racists/nationalists planning a provocative march through the area.
The book is written in a third party point-of-view style with short chapters progressing largely chronologically between three young men “London’s scowling youth” and close friends – Selvon (named after the writer Sam Selvon), Ardan and Yusuf.
All are second generation immigrants – form the Caribbean, Ireland and Pakistan respectively, but all think of themselves as part of “a young nation of mongrels” , as Londoners (and even more narrowly members of their Estate based community) bonding over “high-school sieges, road banter, Premier league football ..”
Ardan and I could not be more different on the surface. But that didn’t matter when our common thread was footie, Estate, and the ill fit we felt against the rest of the world.
Although conscious of the richness of their backgrounds
those of us who had an elsewhere in our blood, some foreign origin, we had richer colours and ancient callings to hear. ….. for me that meant Pakistan and its local masks, which in Neasden meant going Mosque and dodging Muhajiroun. For my breddas on Estate, they were from all over
And their common London link is stronger than their own racial backgrounds - as one character realises when a relative newcomer to London tries to bond over their Pakistani heritage:
Anyway, how could I explain this to Freshie Dave? He knew nothing of our high-school sieges, road banter, Premier League football or anything else that made Estate living what it was. A world away for him. I watched Dave salt my chips. I had more in common with the goons that broke his window in truth
While the form of the book is a common one one thing that makes it distinctive - and must have influenced its Goldsmith selection - is the idiomatic voice in which the youngsters chapters are written (particularly Selvon and Ardan), peppered with “allow it”, “ennet”, “nuttan”, “yuno”.
Ours was a language, a dubbing of noise while [that of the private-school boys] was a one note, void of new feeling and any sense of place
I found the language easy to follow – although I did find that the Urban Dictionary helped me with some of the more specific language (“stush” for example). I think I was also aided by my watching of Arsenal Fan TV and individuals like Troopz, and that is a relevant comparison, as it brings me to two other points.
Firstly football is crucial to the lives of the characters and dominates much of the limited action in the book, and the book is set in a firmly Arsenal area “There were no Tottenham fans for miles” (which as an aside proves that this is by no means a dystopian novel as I have lazily heard it described – for those who live there, the Estate is their life and home).
Secondly the book is set in an time before Social Media (coverage of the murder and related issues comes by TV and Metro not Facebook) – although rather than any specific time it seems a mix of the years in which the author grew up in North London rather than any fixed period (as references to specific footballers, politics and to songs are simply mutually incompatible).
Selvon and Ardan are both trying to escape from their life
For Selvon the escape is physical and external and into the world of sport: pushing himself in running and boxing with an eye on an University place at Brunel and with the ultimate dream of a sporting/Olympian career.
For the fatherless Ardan the escape is mental, internal and into the world of music: Ardan like all the “breddas” is a Grime fan (“Filled with the noises of cursed foil, kicked-down doors and borough folklore. Same sounds found in all Ends, ours included”) but more than the others Ardan lives his life to the beat of that music while when he is alone, composing his own lyrics.
Selvon recognising Ardan’s lack of ambition and self-assertion (after an incident with some Muslim radicals) – forces him into a bus top battle where he merks his opponent (and later sets him up with the chance of a recording contract but more importantly with “a path where he could walk without stooping”)
But there ain’t no prize on the line, like zero I’ve a heart like a pikey, Irish hero In fact, in fact –cut the beat! On this bus, in the ring or on road Come cuss me about them Muslim mandem, I’m willing Cuh’ I don’t do this for your applause or your jaws My bars prove I’m top billing
Ardan’s sections (and particularly one where he arrives at a football match which dominates much of the story) are best read to the background of the Grime Music which he listens to, overhears and reflects on – to give the appropriate experience of his internal monologue.
A suggested playlist of songs mentioned in that chapter would be:
The author himself has said he drew on the storytelling of Grime (as well as I am sure his own expertise in storytelling from the tech firm he jointly founded with his wife https://storygami.com/about) and as just one example the muti-rapper, collective style of When I’m Here reminded me of the point of view technique used.
For Yusuf – far from escaping he finds himself increasingly under capture. His father was the local Imam but increasingly “Disturbed by a brand of worship that became less about history and art, the Islam he loved, and more about the hate curdled up in the present” – and after he dies in an accident the radicals/fundamentalists take over the Mosque and after Yusuf’s brother brings disgrace to his family and community, he and Yusuf‘s freedom to defy the new leaders is curtailed.
Selvon too is in one respect fatherless and I think this is an important theme for the author – together with the differences of and difficulty of communications between first and second generations as seen in the rather wonderful story in the following articles:
Interspersed with these accounts are those of two first-generation immigrants: Caroline from Ireland and Nelson from Montserrat.
Caroline’s sections I found the least convincing as we hear her back story, a member of an IRA family, and her exposure to and rejection of tit-for-tat rape atrocities – unconvincing as I do not think that the author captures her voice or accent at all and unfortunately for him another Booker longlisted book Milkman is entirely based around The Troubles in Ireland and has a wonderful voice. I was not that convinced by her impression of London either - for example would someone bought up in Belfast struggle with the cold January winds in London.
Nelson’s story is moving and compelling – caught up in the Teddy Boy racist attacks on the black West Indian immigrants in the early 1950s and the resulting backlash and riots – he is distanced from his fellow activists first when he calls a police officer “Sir” after a racially-motivated search and then distances himself when he takes a conscious decision to reject the tit-for-tat violence. Now incapacitated and inarticulate due to a stroke, he is still able to reflect on the lessons he learnt ("All I have now .. are these surging, fearsome memories what come and go, sending me back like an echo" ) for himself at that time:
I not never understand the mind of furious men. The hard at heart, all them hasty scrawled placard. For what? How we go from talking about we rights and decent living to being march out like foot-soldiers bent and unthinking and hollow? We dusty group of angered blacks, my brothers and sisters them. How quickly honest talk is exchange for speeching, screaming about we numbers and we bodies and not we needs or means to live? How we plunge and grapple and seize all them loose ideas of unbelonging and offence. Leave all them, I thought. Leave all them behind me. I will abandon them, for me, my Lord, for I. Call me a coward. Call me a soft heart then. For the cruel world is too close in this city. Them madmen like Mosley, the violent stories, them images of torn faces in the tabloid paper. It suffocate we own sense and have it replace with some lower code. For see all them who I called my blood, see them lost to it, lost to a city what hate them.
And its implications for today’s world:
And now I know. I know that on the night of the riot, when the fury blind the way, I ran not for cowardice but for love. And doing anything for love in a city that deny it, is a rebellion.
The book then reaches a violent and shocking conclusion which also sheds an additional level of poignancy on the unattributed Prologue and Epilogue which book-end the story.
However I feel that in what could be a depressing and difficult novel (and has been described as such elsewhere) Nelson’s voice points a way forward – of the bravery, and rebellion of rejecting the call of violence.
Overall this is an outstanding and memorable debut novel.
I am however delighted that the judges of the Booker (the UK’s most prestigious book prize) chose to pick a book which was based in the UK and examined the issues, tensions and fissures in our own society rather than (as so often in the last 2-3 years books which examine the issues in the US).
And rather wonderfully Ardan uses the analogy of Grime to (I am going to chose to believe) make exactly the same case:
Most man-tho, even Selvon and Yoos, they still on their Yankee-made hip-hop. Allow that. Why be on that gas when London’s got our own good moves? Even if. Even if it sounds ugly, cold and sparse. Even if the beats are angry, under scuddy verses, it’s the same noise as on road. Eskibeat, ennet. Why would any man keep listening to Americans with their foreign chemistries after that? Nobody from Ends been to Queensbridge, get me?
I met with a number of my Goodreads acquaintances – to share with them my thoughts on the concluding part of Rachel's trilogy of books, a book now shoI met with a number of my Goodreads acquaintances – to share with them my thoughts on the concluding part of Rachel's trilogy of books, a book now shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmith Prize.
The first to speak was Meike – she was very keen, she said, to understand my views on the book. She herself was a dog lover from a European country, but could read books in at least two other languages including English. She could not she said, tell us, which country she came from or which languages she spoke, but said that if we read her reviews we should be able to recognise sufficient details to solve the riddle. She also said that if we read the notes she had taken before she came to the meeting, then we would find, that, there she had identified the country only, she said to take it out of her final remarks. She found, she said, this book was a mixture of dialogue and thematically interrelated stories. The dialogue, she said, was dominated by the contemplation of life journeys, the passage of time, the juxtaposition, she said, of what lies behind and ahead of the characters.
Doug, an American, interrupted. He was he said particularly keen to hear my views on the book. He himself was not always a fan of the type of experimental fiction celebrated by the Goldsmith Prize – a prize he noted for which Rachel’s two previous books had been shortlisted - a prize also open to male and female authors. In fact, he said, some of these books, he found to adopt a pretentious style and he, he said, would mark his views by writing his review in a parody of that style – reviews which were of course appreciated both by those who, like him, disliked the books but also, he found to his surprise, equally valued by those who enjoyed the books. He did, though, he said, make an exception for Rachel and rated her trilogy, which he said, he had read back to back over 4 days, very highly. Although he was initially disappointed at the lack of any epiphany in the third book, he realised he said, in reflection, that the very idea of an epiphany would probably have defeated the purpose of the book’s “annihilated perspective”
I noticed that Paul became visibly excited at the mention of the term “annihilated perspective” – a term that he said he had been able to trace to the writing of Stephen Pyne on the photography of Herbert Ponting, who, he said, had accompanied Captain Scott on his ill-fated 1911 Antarctic expedition. He was not entirely sure, he said, of the complete relevance of this to the book, but he had some spectacular photographs to show to any one interested. I am, he remarked, eager to hear the thoughts of you, Graham, on this book. He was, he said, not typically a fan of English language fiction and preferred to read more widely across the world of literature. However he said, he was a huge fan of Rachel. The only improvement he could suggest for the book would be, he said, if it had been translated into the language of a European country and then retranslated to English – almost serving, he felt, not just to improve the book, but as a literary symbol of Brexit and what, he said, he hoped would one day be the re-admittance of his country to some form of union with other European countries.
Neil said that for him the early retirement he had taken represented freedom both to pursue photography and to be able to read as widely as possible – he had not, though he noted, planned his early retirement via a spreadsheet. He would very much like to listen to my comments on the book. He noted that Meike was a dog owner, but she had not mentioned, he said, if her dog ran away at any stage, and if it did what that signified. It seemed to him, he said, that there was some significance to dogs running away, which he said, had completely escaped him. He was, he said, pleased to see that Rachel had not during the book, made significant reference to birds rather than dogs – as it was his experience, he said, that many otherwise brilliant pieces of literature were spoilt by incorrect avian taxonomy. He was, however, he said, disappointed to see what Rachel treated “envy” and “jealousy” as synonyms – nevertheless, this trilogy was, he said, a marvellous collection of books.
The last to speak was Jonathan – I had noticed as the others spoke that he was increasingly impatient at one of the phrases being repeated. He had not yet, he said, read the book and so was keen to understand if I followed this consensus of praise. He was he said, a voracious reader of books, and particularly enjoyed he said meeting writers, hearing them read from and discuss their books. It was his habit, he said, at such events, to approach the writer afterwards with a copy of their book and ask them not just to sign the book but to sign it with a personalised dedication that he had carefully selected from their book. He reminded me, that we, together, with Paul had attempted to approach Rachel at an event where she had read from her book – but that she had been more interested in looking aloof and in smoking than meeting her readers. He could not, he said, remember the inscription he had chosen, but he was sure, he said that it did not include the phrase “annihilated perspective” which was, he said, an effectively meaningless term and one which fell into the category of artifice.
They looked at me – I had, I said, prepared a review of the book, which if they agreed I would be happy to read to them. I read what I had written....more
Now winner if the Wellcome Prize following being the joint winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Also shortlisted for the 2018 GoldsmithNow winner if the Wellcome Prize following being the joint winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Also shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmith prize and on the longlist for the 2019 Folio Prize and shortlisted for the 2019 James Tait Black prize.
These are, or were, the contributing circumstances. I view them unsentimentally. It is interesting that I do not consider their rehearsal to be a serious kind of thought. Underneath them runs echoes and rills of different order, however, the inner murmur, and these I take to be true thinking, determinate but concealed.”
I had the tremendous privilege, at the Republic of Consciousness Prize event of being introduced to Charles Boyle (the publisher of this and many other outstanding books and also a brilliant author in his own right - most recently under the pseudonym Jack Robinson) and he asked if I had read this book yet. When I said I hadn't - he commented that it was not a book to be rushed.
Unfortunately my natural reading style is quick - so I would instead say that this is a book which needs to be re-read, and the Goldsmith shortlisting provided the perfect opportunity for a re-read.
On my second read I appreciated the book even more than the first time, although it remains a complex and demanding book – however it is one that is packed with clever detail and allusion, and I suspect will reveal more of its subtlety on each read.
The book opens with a chapter which was shortlisted for a BBC short story award and is the journal of Alec Pryor, a mathematician and ex Betchley Park cryptographer. Alec has been convicted for gross indecency after meeting a young man, Cyril, at a fairground and rather than jail, accepts a year of chemical hormone injections and psychological counselling.
Alec’s story is based on that of Alan Turing – but with many of the names and some of the details changed (as set out in Paul’s excellent review).
Eaves has called Pryor a "Turing Avatar" - but has been at pains to point out that he is not Turing, as Eaves is aware of the depth and subtlety of Turing's words and thoughts and would not be so presumptuous as to believe he could directly write them.
Turing’s therapy sessions were with a Jungian therapist - Jungian therapy (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/th...) being “designed to bring together the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind to help a person feel balanced and whole. Jungian therapy calls for clients to delve into the deeper and often darker elements of their mind and look at the “real” self rather than the self they present to the outside world”, often relying on dream journaling.
Turing himself was of course famous for his exploration of the idea of consciousness and thinking – particularly in exploring the idea of what it means for machines/computers to think as well as being a practical expert in the area of decoding and analysis of secrets through his work at Bletchley Park.
And this book is really an exploration of these ideas - as well as a profound examination of how someone can remain reasonable and decent in the face of pain and confusion, particularly when those conditions are bought on by inhumane treatment. Further Eaves has said that he was interested in how someone like Pryor/Turing - used to operating in a dispassionate, neutral third-party observer world of material science, would cope when faced with understanding a situation where his own experience and pain was fundamentally linked to the situation he was trying to understand.
The opening chapter is, by the standards, of the rest of the book relatively straightforward (albeit still erudite and idea-packed compared to most literary novels), but starts to pick up on some of the ideas above and the themes that will drive the rest of the book.
“It is strangely more instructive, for me, to imagine other conditions, other lives”
“Things seem to be sadly lost, put to bed, left on top of golden summits in the past, trailing away until we see what the lines of event and memory have traced: a plane. A loop that encloses all loss, has no beginning and end”
“It is akin to asking … at what point unconscious material become conscious. Where does one cross over into the other? If the tesselation of forms is perfect, do they divide? Or are they one?”
“I don’t have any kind of social life. It’s topologically invariant under many deformations you might say, although probably only someone without a social life would say that.”
“I have the conviction I am now something like x – a variable. We discuss dreams and in the course of these discussions I have come to see dream figures as other sets of variables”
The second part of the book – Letters and Dreams is where the book gets much more complex
The series features what appear to be a series of Pryor’s dreams, each book ended by letters between Pryor and June (a fellow cryptographer who he nearly married in the War years) which examine the possible meaning and significance of the dreams and Pryor’s state of mind at this treatment and fate.
It could be said of course that these letters are Pryor and June's attempts to decode the meaning of the dreams (alluding to their work as code breakers).
The dreams range from:
the ancient past - at times heading back to the ice age;
the recent past – including elements of Alec’s schoolboy years and his friendship with another boy Christopher, his past relationship with June;
the present - Turing's treatment, his interactions with his therapist
into the future (for example at times he is married and is a father, at other times he seems to be in the 21st century viewing how artificial intelligence is influencing our world) with characters appearing in different guises (his psychotherapist as a schoolmaster or his family and June as characters from Snow White);
the ancient past – at times heading back to the Ice Ages
They are written in what Eaves describes as blank verse and as having a delineated, interstitial quality full of emotion, passion and feelings.
This part can be very difficult to follow at times - although I found much more to appreciate the second time and think that more would be revealed on each subsequent reading.
I was reminded in my approach of the patient and persistent approach that the Bletchley cryptographers had to use to break the German codes - looking for small sections where they could hazard an understanding (common phrases, deliberately planted co-ordinates) and using those to crack the wider text.
As an example I realised this time that the detailed, and rather haunting Snow White scene with Alec’s mother is likely a reference to Turing’s apparent suicide method (using a cyanide laced apple)
A reference to Jane Austen’s Anne (from Persuasion) likely reflects Alec’s dignity and maturity - which I think is key to the book and to Eaves appreciation of him.
At one point a Quantum field influenced discussion of dreams leads June to say “I have heard that dreams are p- and t-reversed: they mean the opposite of what they show, and are all effect in anticipation of cause.” – which I also took both as a reference to the time dimensions of the dream above and a clever reference to the co-mingling of the stories of the fictional P(ryor) and real life T(uring).
I enjoyed the many references to Ovid’s Metamorphosis – reflecting I think Pryor/Turing’s own work in morphogenesis, the sexual metamorphosis that Pryor fears he is undergoing, and the Metamorphosis of man and machine his work is exploring.
At one point Alec says “The world is not atomistic or random but made of forms that interlock or are interlocking like the elderly couple in Ovid who become trees” – which give as nice link to the Booker longlist and “The Overstory” with, of course, that couple explicitly being the inspiration for the characters of Ray and Dorothy.
There are also references to among others: Tesselation, Topology, Escher, Isotopes (Silver as a symbol of equality given its isotopic construction), Schrodinger, Godel, Copernicus, Poincaré, Baudelaire: with the blend of mathematics/sciences and the arts reflecting Turing’s own bridging of those two divides.
The book finishes with a journal section – where Alec is confronted by a council of machines that his work has created (or which possibly created or postulated him and/or his dreams once they gained consciousness).
Overall an ambitious and challenging book but challenging in all the right ways – a profoundly moving one that also stretched my intelligence or (to quote the book)
None of this fantasy, none of the objects in this inner room are memories or perceptions. They’re nether past not present, yet they form a kind of boundary. They’re states of mind and real appearances and I think of them …. as a book of mathematical puzzles
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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