We are now Beginning our Descent

I will try to keep the lyrical references to People's Act of Love to a minimum. Although, search engines pick up terms that are repeated a certain number of times. Perhaps I should spell it incorrectly, too, to be safe? Sorry, Peoples Act of Love is the worst I can do. Don't push me. As you should have guessed, as the intelligent reader you are, We are now Beginning our Descent is written by the author of People's Act of Love, the author I wish to be and the book I wish I had written.

Lyricism done. Almost.

Right, I almost forgot: the author's name is James Meek. The photo on the inside back cover is a black and white head shot of said author with glasses and a widow's peak staring into the reader's nose. Pretentious. As befitting the author of a literary wonder (I could be referring to his other work, Drivetime. Unfortunately I'm not. I'm using up my rations fast).

I'm not the only one obsessed with said wonder. The first paragraph of his biography lists the awards that book has won. More importantly, he was (long-)listed the Booker Prize, which you may or may not know is The Award that would Define my Literary Career, long- or shortlisted, or just listed, perhaps in the same paragraph. (Short of the Nobel. Obviously.) Oh and translated into way more languages more than one person could logically speak.

In the second paragraph we get to the meaty bit. Meek was a journalist, one of that sadomasochistic breed called war reporters, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Which is the topic of the book. We are now Beginning our Descent is about a journalist stationed in Afghanistan soon after the World Trade Centre attacks. After a few pages, we realise that he is blind to many of his own feelings and suspect this will be a major plot device. You know, because of the author's subtle-ish focus on these blind spots. (Yes, that oxymoron is intentional.)

It just occurred to me: was Meek perhaps a cannibal or castrate in Siberia, or a very high and very drunk disaffected youth wandering around the United Kingdom? That's ridiculous. But, if we would have to choose one, it would be the least likely, being the former. But ridiculous. Right?

These reporters are not exactly stalking tanks (although at one point they direct one, but that's not quite the same), but they are driving to bomb sites to witness the destruction of people's lives. Coverage of which, it could be argued, is necessary to heighten people's awareness of the trauma of war. Or just redistributing the trauma. Because there's not enough of that to go around.

Anyway, as you can see, I have an Opinion about this. Which, to be honest, Meek does address briefly in his book. All muddled up in the journalists' own confused and camouflaged traumas.

That's it. We are now Beginning our Descent has this in common with People's Act of Love: My own reflection of the trauma implicit in the stories. Pinpoint reflection because I am not suggesting that anyone could understand - a sub-conscious understanding, because to know about something is not to understand - trauma like war without experiencing it. (Aside unlike the reader, the journalists choose to edge a bit closer, bringing us with them, in one of those repeating Russian-doll illusions.)

We are now Beginning our Descent is not on the scale of its towering sister, but I felt an echo of the shaking of my soul that it began. Perhaps if it had been longer, ideas rounded out or stretched more, one character in particular developed in terms of her strengths and not the flaws that made her dangerous (although, I grant you, this could be seen as another plot device, but is easily distorted into an anti-feminist statement).

Argh, almost every strength and every flaw in this novel can be justified by its themes! Meek is a very smart -manipulator - I mean, author. Events and characters are linked in a roiling mass of cause and effect. How neat! But not all of it sits right, opposite me, on the couch. I feel unsatisfied, because this mass can be mopped up into a pretty algorithm. Unsettling but ultimately pretty.

Ok, you and I both know it, I hate a satisfying novel. A novel should be tragic. Argh! And this one is! (To me.) But, here it is, it's predictable. Not the characters, but the novel. The symbolism maintained, tended like those ridiculous sculpted animal-shaped bushes. A handbook in extended metaphor and resolution. On the backs of the types of characters Meek now characteristically writes. (Should this be a flaw? Perhaps not, but I'm the reader and I don't know the man and my word rules around here.)

This post doesn't really say anything useful, I now realise, except that this may or may not be a good book depending on your reading rules - again, this says nothing! Clearly I am not myself if words fail me like this. One last try: I enjoyed reading the book, the unveiling of various emotions and one scene in particular that bursts on you mid-novel, and I empathised with the main character. I feel an echo of existential crisis. But this is no People's Act of Love. And perhaps there never will be.

Until my own. ;)

The Bourne Identity

Coincidentally and before I begin (because what is an hour of blogging without the joy of making you suffer for my art), I started reading We are Now Beginning our Descent last night. It's written by James Meek, that Meek who rocked my world in People's Act of Love (no sighing!) and then whipped up some blinding dust with Drivetime. That Meek. Review pending so check back regularly. Please.

The main character describes his forthcoming novel (they're all interminably forthcoming, aren't they? It's like a separate genre) to a "socialist Scottish [and drunk] poet":

"It would subvert the genre by making America the enemy - not a group within America, but the American government, the American majority and the American way [yay, no Oxford comma!]. American characters would be portrayed as cliched, two-dimensional, ignorant caricatures, while their European counterparts would be wisecracking, genuine, courageous..."

And here, folks, you have an introduction that breaks all the rules. Consider it a prologue, an epilogue, maybe even epigraph. Or just a really bad introduction justified by literary terms that make it difficult for you to say so without looking stupid. Either way, I did it on purpose. Yep.

Onwards. To slide seamlessly into the book isolated in the title of this post: The Bourne Identity is not that novel. The book is a spy thriller (if you haven't watched the movies with Matt Damon 2.0 except better than the original), written in the 80s. America in the 80s was a mirror of the 2000's: run by a Bush, hostile towards the Middle East as suited them and proudly materialistic.

Or so says History.com. I dunno, I was only just born. All I remember is the fashion. *shudder* Best only resurrected as a memory.

In this example of  popular literature, the Middle East and Russia - sorry, Soviet Union - are noticeable only by their absence. The Vietnam War does feature, as the heinous crime it was, as does South America. You see, the enemy is 'Latin' and the protagonist recognises him only by his dark skin. (Apparently there are no other 'dark-skinned' people in Europe, at least not in the 80s.) So add subtle racism to the list.

The American government gets some left-wing *%$# thrown at it - the novel even satirises a meeting of the intelligence elite, but absolves them later through traitorous violence. The object of the tirade then shifts to a single American group and later a single American man. The Europeans...? Mostly deceitful, playing a game many centuries old, that Americans have no place interfering with.

And the real enemy? One man, manipulating a network of assassins, messengers and crude murderers. I always find this idea, like the Illuminati, fascinating. How? Just how? Maybe, to continue the theme, the man represents the fear of people, individuals, all around us. This man could be anyone. Although, as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. (This man, though, is not that man. He is objectively the personification of evil. Obviously. I mean, he's 'dark', right?)

I'm not perfect either, though: I am slipping into harsh reviewer mode, because destroying is easier than creating.

It is easy to see why the novel is popular. I confess I was caught up in the idea of Europe as the playground of spy games and the romance of two beautiful people, with imagining myself as this brilliant strategist whom others envy and whom these same others are afraid of. The action moves fluidly (though the plot is a bit more porous) and there are different types of action. All good. After all, escapism is the objective of a novel like this.

But, to slip back into reviewer mode, the other thing I cannot stomach is the portrayal of the female character. She is strong in one sense: she is an economist and her insight becomes crucial to Bourne's strategies. But she is also what literary snobs (like myself) call a 'Madonna figure'. (I have this image of Bourne clutched to her bosom like the prophesied child in the Pieta. Yikes. But that's essentially what the metaphor comes down to.)

She is supportive, fine; imagine her arm is slung across his back, his arm on her shoulders (as it is at one point. He recovers remarkably quickly). Creepily supportive; see above. She has Stockholm Syndrome; in the first portion of the novel, he spends a lot of time threatening and beating her with a gun to her head. She believes in his goodness; even though he spends a lot of time before the novel as a crazy, gun-toting mourner in the jungle. And she is beyond moral approach and naive; no evidence here except her patronising and whiney appeals to him to believe in himself.

But I am reading to much into it (pun!). I mean, this isn't We are Now Beginning our Descent. Although I am only 50 pages into it, I am caught up in the author's self-reflection, the meaningless of war and how we cope with trauma. The main characters are rounded out by what they don't say and why they say what they say, whether male or female (granted, the main character is male, so the perspective is slightly skewed). It isn't People's Act of Love, but so far, it's engaging and escapist.

(See, I'm not a total snob. Well, I am, but I can justify it.)

Who's afraid of Samuel Beckett?

Way back when (yes, it was a long time ago), I was an undergrad discovering (literally mining, it felt to me as it feels to every young'n) the works of great (and minor) authors who described parts of my world. Grand, twisted, confusing, unfair, ironic if irony were unstructured, but poetic. (See previous post.) Like medication wrapped in a plastic capsule, the world is easier to swallow when mangled into black typeface. That was when I rediscovered my desire to write.

Every great writer (I hope?) has to first be a bad writer. (I'm ready to fight for this illusion.) The assignment for that  month's creative writing workshop was to write a one-act play. So, I wondered why one might hate a colour. A colour is like a number - innocuous - but still, I do not like the number 7. Even numbers have a pattern (please, tell me you know what that is) and so do primes, but odd numbers in general?! Their only pattern is that they aren't evens!

Can you explain your own reactions to innocuous things? And I'm not referring to favourite colours, which are based on preference, aesthetic. I'm talking about a judgement on something that is by nature exempt from judgement. So, is my explanation above really an explanation? Or is it hidden within the black typeface?

Dear reader, the point is a-coming. Hang in there.

The protagonist of my play is afraid of the colour red, as above. She is in the queue of a bank (clearly not the red one) and breaking the rules of All Queues: talking to people around her, with no reason; commenting on their clothing; skipping places; revealing very intimate information; and questioning the rationale behind All Queues.

Her real motivation is to confront a man who she sees the vortex of every trauma in her life. But the plot of the play is not the plot of this post.

One of the other workshoppers (very knowledgeable but irritatingly so) was intrigued by the pattern of my characters, by the misanthropy and the tragic, self-deprecating humour. She recommended I read Watt by Samuel Beckett. I was racing on the adrenalin of inspiration and dutifully had to have that book. I ordered online and it arrived, in Russian-doll squares of cardboard and bubble-wrap.

The production specs tell you this is something different (though I could not have told you how at the time - please note this, cynics of the influence of an experience of a book). The cover is clouds of dark puce, which fold into the ghost of a man and his suitcase at a train station, facing down the tracks. The title is written in yellow caps in a stark and thin font, as is the name. The surname dwarfs everything. This is a writer of stature, it says.

The cover is matt laminated. (Expensive and a risk, because the film comes off at the corners after a while.) The paper is thicker than the usual 70 gsm and yellowed. (Thicker paper is again expensive and paper nowadays is often acid-free because acid yellows the paper.) The type and layout is old-school, and the design leaves wide margins at all four sides. (The typeface is a thick, calligraphic serif font, which takes more space than a modern, cleaner font, as do the margins. This means more pages and more expense.) The last two points suggest that this a reprinting of the original film - also suggested by the copyright date on the imprint page, which would need to be renewed with each edition.

Where on earth does one find a printing press that prints this outmoded format? None that I know of.

I'm getting carried away. You can ignore that entire paragraph if you like. My point is, this is a work of substance, immune to time. Remind you of any other author? Another author I am afraid to read? Yep, James Joyce and Beckett were friends - groan - friends!

As with Ulysses, I have not read Watt, ten years later. It sits comfortably on my bookshelf, between Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Alexandra Fuller's The Legend of Colby Bryant, part of a section dedicated to books I will read next. (Next being a comfortably indeterminate word.) I have a reading eye larger than available leisure time, so this shelf grows like a creature from Aliens.

At least I have read 90 pages of Ulysses, set schedules and worn the cover a bit. Watt is pristine, which is why I can wax lyrical about its specs. I pick books to read depending on my mood. But when you are feeling dark and deep, does it make sense to read something equally or perhaps more dark? In those moods (in this mood) I pick something wherein the characters kill the fantastical bad... things... (projection intended), where the moral high ground is easy to identify and where I can fixate on seemingly indestructible things like direwolves and dragons.

But this is not the real reason, although whatever sense of self-preservation I have does revolt at the idea. You know my tired complaint, the one I can actually do something about, but am afraid to. I have not published. Yet. But there's another, less obvious one. I have not accomplished. This book reminds me of myself before I graduated into the big bad world (although I would argue I already a foot in the muck and felt the promising squelch).

My play was not very good, although it has some redeeming points, but I never wanted to be a playwright. I also have never really bothered with plot except as a coat hanger for my characters' baggage. Now here is a mentor for my characters, to help me make them great - standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. But I have to accept that, at first, they won't be. They won't be giantific - they will be dwarfish - subjectively dwarfish.

Will reading Watt help me feel more optimistic or less? Will I get farther than I have with Ulysses? (Will I understand more of it? Come'n, you didn't understand 95% of it either.) Will I remember how it felt to be so sure of success that I was prepared to fail? And will I finally find some balls and write the damn thing?! It may be a while before we find out, so hold on, kids.

My impossible life as Jane Eyre

Hello, old friend. Why don't you ever age? We look alike but I have two wrinkles now (I swear the one appeared the morning of my 30th birthday), frown wrinkles, only on one side, the left, like my smile. No, my smile isn't one-sided, jokester; you know what I mean, it's crooked. Unbalanced, lopsided, displaced? Huh, another two differences where we thought there was none. (The second being your obliviousness to nuance. Not yours, hers.) From congruence, to similarity, to a single acquaintance in common.

What am I talking about? Who are you talking to?

Oh, her... I forget she's there sometimes. It's a bit creepy the way she stands behind me, staring over my shoulder at what I haven't done, so I prefer to let her entertain herself. While she's at it, she really could lend a hand, but if she moved, maybe the illusion of symmetry will backflip to, well, what's like symmetry (har!) but with less in common? A straight line. Perhaps. I'm not convinced.

We'd be less alike. I've covered this. Moving on.

Dissatisfaction. We're Generation D. 'The sky's the limit,' say rolly-polly creatures of cute, dopey babies and fogged landscapes caged in black frames or in handwriting poised improbably in mid-air. 'Shoot the moon and bruise yourself against stars' (FYI stars are waaaaay further away than the moon, so I'd advise you go for one or the other). 'There's no such thing as impossible.' (Uh, yeah there is. Walking to the moon unaided, for one. At the very least, there's improbable. The moon elevator, for two.)

It's the Care Bears' fault. My first piece of evidence is the style of the memes above. My second piece of evidence is that I cannot identify another such set of liars in my life. Preschool teachers are the last to whisper such things while they wipe bottoms. The ones I have met, anyway. Ask one. Tell her her kids are 'cute', that they can scrawl honeyed sayings, that they are set to walk to the moon and/or shoot it. I heard her snort on word two.

The Care Bears could slide down rainbows (another impossible feat) and shoot glittered things from their chests. Apart from the fact they were talking bears, they talked in much higher voices than even a Spectacled Bear's growl. Third piece of evidence and slam that gavel, You.

I don't want to be purple or furry or live on a cloud (impossible). I would however like what I was promised: everything. On second thought (not really, because we've talked about this before, you and I. Just nod) literature has to shoulder some of the blame for those ridiculous memes. Alice in Wonderland, The Enchanted Wood, Nancy Drew and the Secret Seven... Possession, The People's Act of Love, As I Lay Dying...

Life is the sum total of the possible. The possible is, in my experience, either horrible or boring. I'm not looking for much: just some Aristotelian tragedy, Gothic martyrdom and a Shakespearean script. How am I supposed to be Jane Eyre without a mad woman in the attic and the burnt ruins of my love? (I could do without Mr Rochester, the ridiculous man. I'll take Jason Bourne.) Yeah, thanks, Care Bears. Since you predate reading, you can slide this all back up that rainbow.

Ok, so possible. I'm gonna go with boring - it's the yellow card. Other side. Yes. My novel and I are pretending we don't notice the other, like two acquaintances who can't remember each other's names. My career... perhaps we all feel like we have more to give than anyone wants? The ideas are flying from our ears and hovering near the ceiling, but hey, at least they have wings. The absence of a personal life here is the absence of a personal life.

Generation D. Ah, and here's some tragedy to chew on: we don't give up. (That 'd' is a bit of a stretch, I grant you.) Even now, my spirit is rallying, tripping the tragic martyr who never ages from the stage. Care Bears swoop in, bearing their burdens, and shoot glitter at the darkness. They swap the yellow card for a purple one, but they confiscate the script. I'm allowed the impossible, provided it isn't literary.