Fiasco - a fairly apt title

Fiasco by Imre Kertész (Translation, Melville House: 2011). A man who has survived the Nazi concentration camps returns home to a Soviet controlled home, and struggles to navigate his way through a changed world.

Part of the point of this is to make sure I read a bunch of different stuff. Knowing that, at the end of a book, I need to come on here and tell you guys about it – it means I don’t want to read the same sort of thing week in week out. You’d get bored with that. You’re renowned for your short attention span. People talk about it behind your back sometimes.

So I heard about this book by a Hungarian author. One that won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And I thought why not. I’ve never read a Hungarian author before. Or a Nobel Prize winning book. So this will be something new to write about.

And it is. Something new to write about, that is. I’ll tell you what this book is not. It is not readable. It is not smooth. It is not flowing. It is not fun or enlightening or riveting.

All sounds a bit negative Nancy, doesn’t it. Sorry to bring the tone down, I’m sure you were having a super day until now. A really sunshine one. But I didn’t enjoy this book. And I won’t lie to you. I can’t, I shan’t.

There are, however, some redeeming factors. I can see what the purpose of the book was. It is clever in a lot of ways, and the style of the first part (the hundred or so pages before chapter 1 starts) is quirky and new and intelligent. I liked the idea of it, the rhythm of the repetition and the slight comedy it brought to an otherwise purposefully stale scene. And the second part of the book, the actual story, had its plus points too. It had some pretty interesting characters, and...

No, that’s me done trying to be positive. The bottom line is this just was not fun to read. And I know not all books need to be fun. They can be heartbreaking, or enriching, or interesting, or exciting, or scary, or pretty much any other strong emotion. But this was none. It elicited nothing extreme from me. Not even anything  endearingly small. Just a bit of boredom.

I get what was being attempted. I appreciated the cleverness. I recognised the sadness, and the political backdrop. But I got over that pretty quick, and then just got sleepy as the book rambled on and stumbled through a string of unremarkable events.

This book never connected with me. It was a literary exercise more than it was a good read. And the GBR scale is nothing if not a measure of good-read-ness.

2 GBR

Can’t bring myself to give something Nobel Prize winning a 1 GBR, or God forbid even a 0 GBR. But honestly, don’t bother with this. Go do something else instead. Pick some flowers, watch some birds, even do some exercise. Anything.

Next week, something a great deal more. Just more. Something to make me want to read again.

The Orchard Keeper - a slow start

The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy (Random House: 1965). The story of an out of the way community between the world wars. A bootlegger kills a hitchhiker and later unwittingly befriends his son.

Everyone’s got to start somewhere, right? There are some jerk’s who start with masterpieces. I hate those guys. The naturally talented sort who seem to be able to just spit out perfection at their first shot. The guys who were clearly better at football than everyone else since they were about three years old. The kind that could kick a conversion from the halfway line about two seconds after they learned to walk. The kind that could draw a bowl of fruit that looked better than the real thing whilst the rest of us were still struggling to hold the pencil the right way round.

Cormac McCarthy is not one of those jerks.

This is a guy who has written some amazing stuff. I’ve reviewed The Sunset Limited here before. I was a fan, as I am of a couple of his other books. Enough people love this guy for a handful of his books to have translated into big budget movies. The Road. No Country for Old Men. These things don’t make their way from his laptop in the early hours of a Tuesday morning to the Screen 1 down the Odeon on a Friday night by luck. A lot of people have to be fans, and a lot of people have to spend a lot of their money for it to happen.

No doubt, Cormac McCarthy is very good at writing. But he had to start somewhere. And The Orchard Keeper is it. This is his first published book. So I thought it’d be interesting to find out how he kicked off.

Disappointment doesn’t quite cover it. I opened the first page all eager. I was all set to connect at the roots with one of American literature’s greatest living writers. This came out in 1965, and made enough of a splash to get McCarthy noticed and start an illustrious career.

By about page ten, I knew this wasn’t going to live up to all of that. For starts, the story jumped around like a flea in a jumping around circus in which the fleas are forced to jump around more than fleas naturally jump around.

I’m all for a complex story line. I’m all for strands being laid down, dropped, picked up again. Weave it correctly, and it can make for a rich experience. But that didn’t happen here. All that happened was mass confusion. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about what happened in this story. I’m still not even sure why it’s called The Orchard Keeper. I spent so much time flicking back and forth trying to figure out who was who and what was what that it all ended up being a chore.

Elmore - not a fan of hooptedoodle

For twos, the sections which I decided just to sit and read weren’t that great either. I mean, the writing was good. The guy can create scenery and atmosphere that can knock your socks off. But then I was there, sockless, and it kept going. Elmore Leonard talks about avoiding too much hooptedoodle in writing. Me, I tend to think there’s room for a bit of hooptedoodle when it’s well done and indulged in with moderation. But moderation had left the building here. McCarthy kept going and going and going.

There was just no balance. I love an atmospheric book. I love pages that can take you to complete other places and keep you there for hours. I love writers that create tastes and sounds and smells and light. There doesn’t always need to be huge amounts of plot behind it. But it does need to have some meaning that breaks the surface. There needs to be a structure behind it. Steinbeck does it. McCarthy does it too, just not on his first time out.

So no, didn’t really enjoy this one. There were good bits, a few little anecdotes that worked, scene setting passages that warmed me (until they dragged on).

But when the last page went by, I was pleased to be done with this.

2 GBR

On to the next one. A German novella next week. Think that’s the first time I’ve ever said that sentence.

Straw Dogs - uncomfy philosophy

Straw Dogs, Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals by John Gray (Granta Books: 2003) A philosophy book in which Gray explains his view of the human race, disagreeing with pretty much everyone else along the way. He questions everything, and comes to some incredibly uncomfortable conclusions.

I enjoy books that make me think. I do. Ones that present new ideas to me, ones that make my mind wander in directions that it wouldn’t naturally. I think everyone kind of likes that. It’s one of the reasons we read.

And so when my dad gave me a philosophy book, I thought “why not.” This is a book whose very purpose is to present new ideas. That could be kind of fun, huh?

I was wrong. Yes, thinking about stuff can be fun. But there are limits.

Where do I start? What was the thing I didn’t enjoy about this book the most? Well, an easy read this isn’t. Thankfully, it is split up into small digestible bits, but not exactly what you would call easily digestible bits. It’s like eating something you hate – just because you’re allowed to take small bites, doesn’t make you wretch any less.

And then there’s the ideas themselves. I’ve never been more unsettled by a book. If Coldplay is music to slit your wrists by, this may very well be the paperback equivalent. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and doesn’t by itself make this an unenjoyable book. After all, there’s clearly some worthy philosophy in this. I’m happy enough to recognise the fact that there are some worthwhile and eye opening thoughts on the pages. But they weren’t half depressing. I often put this book down just plain upset, questioning everything, to the point that I wasn’t even sure if I was a real person, or if there is even such a thing as a person.

Again, I don’t want it to sound like I don’t enjoy thought provoking stuff. But this takes it a little far if you ask me. There was some stuff in here I did agree with, like Gray’s conviction that the human race is (at its core) not really any different to any other type of animal. I agreed with some of the points he made about religion. But the nods of my head were far outweighed by shakes. This guy makes so many radical presumptions to base his depressed view of the world and the human race on, that by the end of each page, you don’t even have the energy to disagree with him anymore.

So yes, this did open my mind a little. This did present new thoughts. It did give me an entirely new kind of book to read.

But the pages did not fly by. I spent most of my time either trying to figure out what he was saying, or disagreeing with him.

I did not enjoy reading it. And I don’t think you will either (unless you’re my dad, who apparently did enjoy this).

2 GBR

And both of those are a vague admittance that there is philosophical worth here - just a pretty depressing, disagreeable, tough to read kind of worth.

Next week, something fun and fictiony I think. I think we all need a break after that one.

History of a Pleasure Seeker - just no fun

History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason (Weidenfield & Nicolson 2011). The first in what promises to be a series of books chronicling the rise and rise of a cadish character in early 1900s Amsterdam.

I’m not sure about you, but me, I like my early twentieth century sex scenes with a bit of tongue in cheek (so to speak). I’ve written before about how I love Lucifer Box, Mark Gatiss’ rakish gigolo creation. I thought History of a Pleasure Seeker may give me a similar mix of knowing puns and far-fetched exploits. Something light and frivolous.

Instead, it seemed to take itself very seriously indeed.

Which was fine, for large sections of the book. The plot was such that it kept me hooked in parts; kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next to a number of the characters.

But it was all let down a little (a lot, if I'm honest) by the time spent on the sex scenes, and the seriousness with which they were presented. Which sounds quite prudish of me, I know. But this book was sold to me as a fun tour of early twentieth century excess, so naturally I assumed a little bit of adventure and a large spoonful of nods and winks. What I got was less Evelyn Waugh and more Mills and Boon. I’ve never actually read Mills and Boone, and I don’t intend too. You go ahead if you want to, but we may not be able to look each other in the eye afterwards. Which would be a shame.

I feel a little aggrieved that I was tricked into reading this, to be honest.

I guess it’s my own fault. I was seduced by the marketing. The book itself is one of those artsy looking, compact hard-back sorts - the kind that feel good to hold. I also read an interview with the author where he came across as an interesting guy. The kind of guy who would write a good book. Apparently, he wrote out the whole of this one long hand in a large leather notebook. That’s the kind of detail I like, makes me feel that by reading the book I’m entering some sort of modern literary set.

But none of that counts if the book isn’t fun to read. And that seemed to be the key ingredient missing here – fun. I mean, if you’re going to create a character that floats around the gregarious, highly sexed settings that Mason chooses for his protagonist, surely you have to give him a bit of wit and innuendo. Surely he needs to be ever so slightly aloof, a little other-worldy. But instead, Mason gives us far too much of his “motivation”, makes Piet (the main character) a bit too real, takes all the light heartedness out of his capers. He’s just too complex and dull to live up to the “pleasure seeker” promise of the book’s title.

Mason, for me, has simply missed the point of this sort of book. Or perhaps it’s his publisher’s fault for presenting the book the wrong way. Or perhaps it’s my fault for expecting this to be something it wasn’t. Whoever’s fault it is, this just didn’t work.

For the first time in a little while, I can hand on heart say that I did not enjoy reading this.

2 GBR

Largely because I can't bring myself to give a 1 GBR score.

There’s a week’s worth of reading I’ll never get back. Silver lining? At least you can go watch a Columbo instead of picking this one up. Sometimes, I wish I was you (sometimes).