My Month in Novels (Oct)

A quick run-through of this month’s reading materials. Reviews pasted from Goodreads.


1. Kurt Vonnegut: Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

Another sublime lesson in humanism from the doyen of deadpan. This novel is rich in humour, pathos, cynicism, invention and all-purpose lunacy. Top Von.


2. Flann O’Brien: The Best of Myles

This bumper-sized collection of Cruiskeen Lawn columns runs to 400 pages in a small 10pt font. You would be mistaken for thinking this covers his entire career at the Irish Times. In fact, it only covers from 1940-1945. Begad!

Bearing this in mind, his output was extraordinary. The range of wit, erudition, linguistic skill and creativity is outrageous. Among the funniest columns are the "Research Bureau," "The Brother" and the "Catechism of Cliché." O'Brien is at his finest when taking a ridiculous idea and stretching it to breaking point.

His grasp of language is also amazing. This book bedazzles with endless wordplay and puns. There are also frequent forays into Latin and French, as well as an entire section written in Gaelic. The section "Miscellaneous" is less successful. There are one too many rambling and baffling columns here, and the book does seem to run on forever.

Still: a top read and the definitive collection of O'Brien's articles and genius during wartime Ireland. A pint of Flann is your only man.


3. Kurt Vonnegut: Player Piano

Vonnegut's first novel (circa 1952!) bears little relation to his later, greater works, barring the subject matter. Player Piano is an ambitious speculative story about evil man-made machines turning society into one big fascist corporation. Yes, yawn, but this was seven years after D-day. Time has not been kind.

His storytelling is lucid, amusing and real, but falls away in the second half. This book is twice the length of his other works, and too self-consciously first-novelly to sustain interest until the final court scene. (Yes, an actual court scene! And there's a rousing speech from the hero too!)

Think of this as a piece on a par with the short stories he wrote in the '50s: writing with purpose, vision and coherence from a writer who would break into absolute genius at the turn of the sixties. For Vonnegut completists only.


4. Kurt Vonnegut: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

My Kurt Vonnegut marathon continues. This novel hopped around a little structurally (not in a good way) but was still miles funnier, more dignified and powerful than most anti-capitalist satires. Next!


5. Flann O’Brien: Myles Away From Dublin

Articles written in the last six years of O'Brien's life (1960-66) under the pen-name George Knowall. His wild and innovative years on the Irish Times behind him, here he settles into a mildly grumpy smart-alec persona.

This version of O'Brien is a easier for some to swallow. The writing is standard column stuff kept entertaining by the steady prose.


6. Flann O’Brien: Myles Before Myles

What amazes about this collection:

a) The humour hasn't dated, even if the references have.
b) It is twice as erudite and funny as any modern satirical book.
c) Flann O'Brien wrote an entire magazine by himself.

This collection is a scream: especially the excerpts from Blather, his early ramblings, and the assorted silliness under a billion or so pen-names.

The cuttings from The Bell and his poetry translations are very dull. But who cares. This is one of the funniest books you'll never read.


7. Kurt Vonnegut: Jailbird

Jailbird is a quintessentially Vonnegutian tale of rich-man guilt and the futility of capitalist America.

The story is most effective when dealing with Walter's love interests. Vonnegut captures the intensity and importance of relationships like no other writer, by stretching them throughout life, showing how love endures more than money or career success. He does this, of course, with dollops of sentimental irony.

I think "sentimental ironist" isn't a bad summation of Vonnegut's style, though his books always have a unique theme or thread running through them.


8. Flann O’Brien: The Hair of the Dogma

OK, too much Flann O'Brien is exhausting. I'm taking a well-deserved break.

The Best of Myles is more than enough Cruiskeen Lawn for anybody. Leave this collection to the diehard fans. Among the treats here are the articles on a Dublin man's pint-wife relations, pieces on The Poor Mouth, Finnegans Wake and bicyclism.


9. Greg Boyd: Carnival Aptitude

Charming combination of collage and flash fiction. The art is surreal and witty, the stories perverse and poetic.

This is the perfect way to showcase flash pieces. Flash fiction is basically a way for poets to write prose and consider themselves "proper" writers. This artistic triumph makes a convincing case for brevity.

The author is (or was) the editor of Asylum, which may or may not prejudice you.


10. Amélie Nothomb: The Book of Proper Names

Nothomb is a tough cookie to fathom. Her books are simple and short, predictable to the point of cliché, and yet eminently readable. She doesn't mess around. She tells the story as fast as possible and leaves the reader in a glow. That is clever.

This novella is a riff on the child-prodigy-runs-into-obstacles theme, with an undercurrent of murder and madness. Nothomb does a good job playing with these clichés, moulding them into something original with wit and panache.

(NB: I think I've used the phrase "wit and panache" in about fifteen reviews so far. Curses!)


11. Stanley Crawford: Log of the S.S. Mrs. Unguentine

A novel written in the form of a ship's log. The style isn't wholly compelling but Crawford creates a strange, dreamlike world of marriage in a state of exploding madness. Isn't it always?

Good bedside reading for all the recently divorced out there. (Especially those who married sailors).


12. Bernard Share: Inish

Words alone cannot describe the awesomeness of this book, but I ought to try.

Imagine being trapped in the mind of an OCD amnesiac possessed by the spirit of James Joyce and Flann O'Brien. Imagine a book that uses such strange, warped idioms, again and again, that the mind is forced into hilarity by proxy.

Imagine a story that makes no sense, but entertains and amazes with the galloping energy of the prose. This book is a masterpiece. It has to be read to be believed. (Hint ...more Words alone cannot describe the awesomeness of this book, but I ought to try.

Imagine being trapped in the mind of an OCD amnesiac possessed by the spirit of James Joyce and Flann O'Brien. Imagine a book that uses such strange, warped idioms, again and again, that the mind is forced into hilarity by proxy.

Imagine a story that makes no sense, but entertains and amazes with the galloping energy of the prose. This book is a masterpiece. It has to be read to be believed. (Hint hint).


13. Andrew Kaufman: All My Friends Are Superheroes

The binding in this book is criminal. I mean the 2006 Telegram Books edition. You can barely open the damn thing.

That's maybe a blessing. There are better ways to pass the time than reading 100 pages of saccharine whimsy. This book is so cute I want to punch its face in. Though I am sure it has its admirers.


14. Chip Kidd: The Cheese Monkeys

Awesome book. Terrible ending.


15. Gilbert Sorrentino: Something Said

As well as a fearless formal innovator, Sorrentino was also an academic of immense eloquence and skill. These essays serve as manifestos for all that is original, inventive, daring and unclichéd in fiction and poetry. Writers discussed include William Carlos Williams, Edward Dahlberg, Gabriel García Márquez, Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, Flann O'Brien and Donald Barthleme.


16. Kurt Vonnegut: Deadeye Dick

This is satire at its blackest. Deadeye Dick might be the angriest of Vonnegut's books: nuclear weapons, small-town life, hopeless parents and marriages, drug addiction, warped governments, racism, police brutality and gun laws. It's all here in this mulligan stew of righteous indignation.

Brilliant. A real tour de force of grumpy trouble-making.


17. Percival Everett: Wounded

A warm but gritty book about a reluctant horse trainer saving lives and kicking ass.


18. Fernando Pessoa: The Book of Disquiet

The Book of Disquiet is a LiveJournal blog as written by E.M. Cioran or Albert Camus.

Bernardo Soares, Pessoa’s leading alter-ego, imagines “the corpse of [his] prose” being “lowered into general oblivion” upon his death. This might have been the case had not archivists rescued his fragmented idlings from the black void and published them in this volume.

It strikes me, given Soares’s desire for extinction, and the delusion of posterity, that this selection of writing is redundant. What impact can one man’s daydreams, solipsistic tracts, repetitive observations, written from a chronically depressed mind, have on another? What is the function of this book? If the writer is so intent on being ignored, on doting on life’s gloominess, why should we waste our time lauding the prettiness of his prose?

Would he care that a legion of people find this book a philosophical masterpiece, that we empathise with his eternal struggle with everyday life, with his permanent existential misery? No: he is only happy in dreams.

This is similar to Marcel Benabou’s nonbook: it is the very fact of its valuelessness that gives it its value. In practice, at least. With The Book of Disquiet, Soares has written himself into extinction.

Narrative Class [4]

I’ve been meaning to keep on top of the MA reports, but have been distracted by— well . . . writing. Something must be going right.

The last few classes were on tone, structure and character. This is sort of thing I should be writing about but frankly, transcribing my notes is tiresome and I wouldn’t want to spread course material over the internet, or the whole university system would collapse.

Tone in particular has been my greatest concern over the last four months. I’ve written a few short stories with tighter viewpoints, narrative voice and rhythm. These involved stripping the humour from my work, which was successful in the case of a horror story, and writing a story with more sentimental content, which also went well. Both these stories were picked up when I sent them out, so I am happy with progress on this front.

My current full-length work is an attempt to explore the limitations and possibilities of narrative stance. The character, writing in the first person, refutes the success of first person as a means of storytelling while telling a perfectly engaging story in the first person. The second section, narratorless, questions the need for a third or first person POV by telling a story through documents that perform the function of plot, character, back story, etc.

The third section is, appropriately, in the third person, and is a story written about two real people—the narrative is reportage (or spying) tailored to fit the romance market. The writer’s impositions (via footnotes) gain hold of the narrative, twisting the focus of the story.

I have very clear ideas about this project, but we’re being trained to assess the worth or purpose of our work through a ruthless interrogation process. This helps to get to the heart of a project—listing its intentions, ideas and themes until a definitive purpose emerges. Almost like a psychiatrist asking: “Yes, but what do you really feel?”

My first assignment went OK-ish. It’s tricky to turn a reflective essay into an original piece of writing. It’s a skill that would be really useful in creative non-fiction, the module I’m doing next year. I overdid the humour in this one, knocking the tone off-balance so it sounded like a piss-take. Oops. I want to write the story, though, as I have a voice in mind for the lead.

The geese above are named Concert & Roderick.

Things I Would Rather Forget

I was seven. The only two things I loved: lollipops and worms. I stuck my hand in the loch to try and smooth out the water. I didn’t like the way it wrinkled up and down like that, so untidy.

I was nine. My new spectacles had arrived. I looked like William G. Stewart in his sex bomb phase. During break time I would remove the specs in case I got a football in the face.

Ten or thereabouts. All the cool kids drank milk, so I accepted the free daily carton so I could hang around and absorb their awesomeness, tipping the milk down the sink afterwards.

Twelve or near. Set the template I would follow for all PE lessons. Hanging around the sidelines, avoiding the football in case it hit me in the face. When it arrived, I’d kick it away. Rotten thing.

Thirteen. Knock over a bowl of ink in art class. Gingerly get up from desk, having gone unnoticed, retrieve six or seven tissues and mop up ink. Turn over desktop. No one notices.

Fifteen. First bum pinch from girl. The girl smoked cigarettes round the back and stank accordingly. It was a thrilling moment.

Sixteen. The entire age of sixteen. No explanation required.

Tandoori Dreams

Yesterday I dined at The Lollop, a new Indian restaurant on Dunbar Street. Our waiter was Gregor, a native whose claim to fame was a bit-part in Kevin & Perry Go Large, the dire Harry Enfield vehicle. He greeted us with cheer and told us horror stories about Kathy Burke’s temper and addiction to caviar.

The food arrived moments later. (Before we’d even ordered). I had the roast cravat in a bed of sizzling vinyl, Mrs Q favouring the steamed Macaca eggs in a semblance of varnished orlops. The cravat was chewy, though rich in the essence of xenophobic Tory. The vinyl was amazing—a cavalcade of post-punk sensations from XTC to The Fall.

Mrs Q complained about the orlops. They were clearly from the third deck of the SS Fulcrum and not the fourth, grown on a pirate ship out of Birmingham. The Macaca eggs were divine. They took her back to her time plucking the eyebrows off gnus to sell to antelope brothels.

The restaurant had incredible ambience. We sat in the hovering section, where a rift in the space-time continuum kept the tables and chairs floating above diners below. (Diners like to sit below and eat scraps that have fallen off the plates above. I tossed down a jug of water!) The roof was open that night and we dined in the glorious evening rain. I can’t think of nicer way to spend the night: getting soaked to the bone with the woman I love.

For afters, we shared a half-shaved Chilean miner. It was a little bony, but still tasted of victory. Highly recommended.

So please, next time you’re on Dunbar Street, pop into the The Lollop. You won’t regret it!

Beat on the Brat

This prompt from the Big Beat From Badsville blog was to write a short crime story with a Ramones song as title. Impossible to resist:

***

Eleanor’s three rules: no playing, no talking, no moving. When mummy is watching her programme, you should observe strict obedient silence, or you know what you’ll get!

Sundays are a great day for domestic violence. The desperate search for a motive, a morsel, a mote—some reason to live another week, to get through it without killing someone. Unfortunately, on this winter night, the motives were in short supply. It was freezing out, the taxman wanted his money, no one wanted to hire two thick planks with four kids.

David’s three rules: shut up, get me a beer, don’t speak unless I say so. When daddy is staring at the wall, you should observe strict obedient silence, or you know what you’ll get!

Two people who hate each other stuck in a house with four children they don’t love have two options. The first is to divvy up the kids, move to another country, and wait a few years. The second is to beat the children with predictable regularity, beat each other, then repeat this cycle until someone dies, a lesson is learned, and guilt rusts the soul.

Lucy’s three rules: hide from mummy, hide from daddy, run away.

Smack! Take that second child! Which one was that? What’s her name? Take that! “You useless ****!” Wham! “You ******* ****!” It’s the slapstick of hate! What are brutes if not clowns without the capacity to love? You would laugh, really, if there was anything to laugh about. A bottle to the temple, and someone’s dead. Which is one is that?

Jade’s three rules: lie on the floor, stare at the ceiling, stop breathing.

Ho-ho.

Vashti Does Nick

I don’t usually post music or videos here, because everyone has their own little interests and can’t be arsed sitting through a whole two-three minute clip, but I don’t care this time.

I missed a recent Nick Drake tribute concert, which I will regret, as Vashti Bunyan (best living female vocalist) was on the bill. Fortunately, a few songs from that amazing show were preserved on YouTube, including this heart-blasting rendition of ‘Which Will’:

Clamjamfried Chicken

Old school faces are emerging from the swamp of my past. The female ones wear too much makeup (inch-thick mascara or mad rouged cheeks) and the male ones look like alcoholics. Time is a harsh mistress with teeth marks and iron thighs. We are powerless in her thrall.

Instead of cowering in horror, I look upon this as a fresh start. I never spoke to most of them at school (or at stool), so this time around, I can be erudite and witty and lecture them on the importance of gelatine. Or, alternatively, I can ignore them in a whole new era in a whole new medium. The agony of choice!

I am losing the will to blog. There are only so many spoofs, fakeries, writing posts, rants or reviews one can manage in a lifetime. In the future all informative blog posts will be downloaded from the brain anyway, via the iBrain application, Wordpress compatible too!

Oh—I met a writer the other day whose girlfriend is an inbuilt ego fluffer. He hands his elfin love pup his latest scribble and she heaps praise upon his genius. I ought to get me one of those. Mrs Q is a harsh critic and loves poking holes in my ideas. (Which is great, but it hurts sometimes). Having said that, she offers praise only on ideas that chime with her sensitive outlook. None of this cold postmodern flimflam for her, oh no!

You must read Inish by Bernard Share. This darling book quivered my heart in a special way. (Through formal experimentation and daring originality of language). I can’t explain what it’s about. It defies all explanation and that’s why I love it. Order now.

I would also like comedians to lay off Catholics for a while. I understand you are vexed that the Church has a crooked side and that invisible deities aren’t your bag . . . but shut up now. We get it. Move on.

Goodnight.

(Picture: Jan Van Eyck self-portrait, 1433?)