1. Kurt Vonnegut — Cat’s
Cradle
The best way to cure Reader’s Block is to reread authors
whose works induce chest pains of happiness in one’s . . . chest, so I did this
with Mr. Vonnegut this afternoon. Sadly, upon rereading Cat’s Cradle, which I first tackled in 2007 at the summit of
Arthur’s Seat as a love-drunk twenty-year-old starting to lick the world’s
honeyest creases after a period of long-term depression, I was more
disappointed than delighted. I suspect this book is read largely in one’s teens
when confronting the vast nothingness of space and wondering where religion and
civilisation and love and death fit into this premise. Five years later, some
of these things have slid into place or slipped to the back of one’s mind to be
replaced with short-assured leases on two-bedroom flats and where to purchase a
decent chapatti bread for under five pounds. And so on. But this novel is a
structural mess, shambolic and meandering and at times a little laboured.
Mostly, however, Vonnegut is at his satirical peak and some of his finest
creations and enduring ideas are explored in the novel, among them Bokononism
and ice-nine and the weary reticence
of a cynical humanist who loves people so much he can’t stand their company. A
masterpiece at a certain time in one’s life. As a novel, patchy.
2. Craig Thompson —
Blankets
I notice it’s been almost a whole year since I read my first
graphic novel (Asterios Polyp on
April 21 2011), so it’s fair to say I haven’t exactly immersed myself in the
genre. Heh heh. My second graphic novel was an arbitrary grab at the library
and was one of the few non-superhero-based entries on the shelves. Or perhaps
the only non-superhero entry would be
more accurate. What is with these people? You can’t be Batman, and drawing a superhero version of Batman will not bring
you closer to that dream, m’kay? For Cheeses sake! (Credit to Mike for that
ejaculation). This multi-award-winning piece is an autobiographical look at
life in the Bible belt, with poor Craig wearing the trousers of faith many
unfortunate Wisconsinians had to wear in their God-fearing towns circa the
early 1990s. The romance aspect is purpler than a beetroot factory, but
believable, in places. I liked the depiction of his girlfriend’s family, that
seemed a more interesting plot to me, and the religious tension contrasted well
with the permafrost of failed love. Nice work. I look forward to my third in
April 2013. What will that be, ink lovers?
3. Spike Milligan — Hidden
Words: Collected Poems
These poems are moving and silly but always deadly serious.
Spike Milligan is at his poetic best in the short form, thus:
Dreams I
Dripping dreams
of life away
Dreaming drips
night and day
Do you hear the
waters lap?
How many dreams
left in the tap?
Untitled
Nothing changes
Nothing does
It ends up like
It always was
It always will
Because, because
4. Gore Vidal — Duluth
Another of Gore’s raucous entertainments. This anarchic
semi-satirical, semi-surreal novel flirts with the metafictional (two decades
after its heyday) and flings about a dozen different plots at the reader that
all intersect in sometimes random and sometimes logical ways. I gave up looking
for the clever connective tissue between the elements fifty pages in, possibly
because there isn’t any. Summarising the novel would also be a waste of my
time, since the storylines all take various absurdist detours into fictional
reality, political satire, edgy rape humour (something uncommon these
days—wonder why), and an exhausting display of imaginative barbs that relent
only when the book staggers to its bug apocalypse climax. This is the sort of
book most authors would write if they had the status to publish anything like
Mr. Vidal—a completely berserk detour of the imagination unfiltered by such
trivialities as audiences, readers, or marketing strategies. Completely loco
and hilarious.
5. André Gide — Uriel’s
Voyage
I don’t know why Thomas Pynchon is on the cover.
6. Alison Bechdel — Fun
Home: A Family Tragicomic
Shatters all my preconceptions of the graphic novel,
reassures me of the form’s capacity for dense literally allusiveness,
intellectual analysis and philosophical ponderings. Brilliant. The
writer/artist was raised in a marvellously retro setting—a refurbished mansion
kitted out like a Russian estate, with a snobbish bookworm for a father and an
upper-class actress manqué for a mother (both of whom taught high-school
English). The story attempts grand parallels between the author and her father,
drawing comparisons with Fitzgerald, Proust and Joyce, and overegging the Greek
myth a little, but also zips along with humour, eccentricity and a generation
of repressed homosexuality. Mega good. Even better is Oriana’s review. Read
that instead. If my graphic novel reviews seem short it’s because I’m still
learning how to critique the artwork: anyone who can draw a circle sans compass is a genius to me.
7. Marjane Satrapi — Chicken
With Plums
I saw the movie of Satrapi’s Persepolis
and found it deeply irritating. But, being a pioneer in the graphic novel
form—hell, a lone populiser of the
form—I had to read something by her. This graphic novella (must I start a
separate shelf for shorter graphic works?) is a melancholy folktale about a
poor musician whose wife snaps his tar (like a sitar) in two. Finding no
replacement for his prize instrument, he takes to his bed to die, where he
reflects on his thwarted life—marrying the wrong woman, neglecting his only
son, but mainly losing his tar. The question raised: if all great art is borne
out of misery, who needs great art? Interesting A.L.
Kennedy article about this in The
Guardian recently. Anyway: very gloomy and very good. I will read Persepolis
if someone twists both my arms.
8. Posy Simmonds — Tamara
Drewe
I am on a graphic novel kick this weekend, but don’t worry,
I have a week of Grossmith, Dostoevksy and Nicola Barker lined up, so normal
service will be resumed. This one is known mostly in the UK and was
serialised in The Guardian, then
turned into a movie with the brilliant Roger Allam and Tamsin Greig. Being a
parochial, very English piece gives it little international appeal but it is
spiky and witty in a BBC Radio 4 sort of way. The movie irons out several
crinkles in the original, such as the fate of the arrogant rock drummer, Jody’s
death by huffing computer polish, and bringing about a happier ending for the
bearded American. Very unHardylike, perhaps, but I love my underdogs to win.
The plot concerns a writer’s retreat in the English countrywide, probably
somewhere like Devon, and the various
adulterous hijinks that take place after a local beauty returns with her
crooked nose fixed to stir up trouble. Lots of fun. See the movie if you can.
9. Charles J. Shields
— So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life
A cursory glance at Charles J. Shields’s bibliography shows
him to have authored a string of hack profiles ranging from Saddam Hussein to
J.K. Rowling, plus books on sexual disorders, Uruguay and Vladimir Putin. Clearly
this is the man to write the first full-length biography of bouffant satirical
demigod Kurt Vonnegut. CLEARLY. Like him or not, he will remain, for time
immemorial, the first and only man to have authority from The Master to write a
full-length bio (or, at least, a vague thumbs-up from a doddery moribund man
who he spoke to twice). But here we are, here it is, so it goes, and so on.
Shields has written an extremely workmanlike bio, forgoing any textual trickery
or temporal twiddling to present a birth-to-death portrait of the artist as a
cranky firecracker, partial Mormon, and counterculture Baal. It zips along
nicely. Shields’s own hack background clearly mirrors Vonnegut’s career chasing
moolah in the slicks, so any protests on that front are churlish. CHURLISH. He
describes well the maelstrom of family in Kurt’s life, and the agents, friends,
extra kids and sparring partners.
But there’s one person missing from this bio: Kurt Vonnegut.
I see only a shadow walking through these pages. I see his first wife Jane come
to life brilliantly—an utterly devoted charmer who never loses faith in Kurt’s
ability to become a great writer, who Kurt breezily betrays once his career
picks up traction. His children swirl in and out the novel, tormented and amused
at this cartoon grump lurking in his office doorway trying to write a novel
with very short chapters. This isn’t necessarily a criticism—Kurt was deeply
insecure and lacking identity. His shrewd businessman’s instincts dominated
much of his writing life—the famous perm and moustache was cultivated to impress
his readership following Slaughterhouse-Five’s
huge success. His advice as a writing teacher was geared towards selling
stories for vanishing magazine markets. He clearly relished his financial freedom
after a long decade grafting largely for financial success. He was a free
enterprise capitalist, not a socialist dreamer.
There are many unpleasant revelations in this book, mostly
Kurt’s treatment of women: not impressive. Embarrassing examples abound,
including his on-campus sexism and philandering in the sixties, though this is
hardly surprising given the middle-aged males dominating the writing courses at
the time. Basically, Kurt was an asshole. He acknowledges this many times in
interviews and his books. He was an overgrown baby who wanted status and
respect as an author, forever insecure about his place in the pantheon. Anyway:
none of this matters, really. We have the books. Shields isn’t too hot on the
canon, offering slim synopses and capsule summaries where meatier examinations
might have been welcome for the devotee. He is also overly harsh about a number
of his works, lingering on the critically popular ones. More drooling devotion
might have been welcome.
Although meticulously compiled from limited scraps, the book
is frustrating since we don’t get a better sense of Vonnegut outside his
autobiographical works. Perhaps that’s the point: Kurt lived a Jackson Pollock
life, as anarchic and shambling as his novels, and ultimately he was a product
of depression-era America,
the 30s and 40s, and remained rooted to these beginnings all his life . . .
which is hardly a flaw. Learning how typically writerly he was “humanises” the
man behind the novels, and does little to change our opinion of his work. His
last ten years of life, sadly, were spent with Jill Krementz, whose behaviour
towards her eighty-year-old spouse is not what one might term “affectionate.”
Kurt really needed Jane in his life in his dotage, the poor sap. So: a solid
bio with a throwaway appendix, badly endnoted.
10. George &
Weedon Grossmith — The Diary of a Nobody
11 April
Sat down to write a capsule review of The Diary of a Nobody. Interrupted by a loving thump at the door.
It was Mark Nicholls from my review of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, a piece of spoof metafiction
that ranks as my most liked GR review. I studied my 23-year-old self carefully
then looked at my 25-year-old self and noted nothing had changed facially in
two years except I was even more handsomely bespectacled. “Would you like to
buy a copy of . . . ?” he began, but I’d heard it before. After all, I wrote
it. “Finished that novel we started in 2009 yet?” he asked snidely. “Yes! I
finished that like a month ago,” I said, triumphantly. Mark Nicholls from 2009
circled the Mark Nicholls from 2012 like a toreador taunting a pacifist bull.
“Wow. Speedy Gonzalez. You must be the new Joyce Carol Oates,” he said. I
snickered, neglecting to tell him about our vagina transplant.
12 April
I change to the present tense since the review is being
written today, contrary to the opening sentence. That’s an example of what we
call in the trade “unreliable narration.” Having doubts about writing a spoof
diary review, despite having spoofed since my teens. I put on the new Big Sexy
Noise album, Trust the Witch. Lydia
Lunch appears on my desk and berates me for being a pussywhipped pastyasted
whitebred chickenshed motherloving dolescrouging booksucking bitchboy. I tell
her that’s far too many dashless hybrid words for a Thursday. She laughs and we
have anal and a slice of malt loaf.
13 April
I will change tense, since this day follows the day on which
the review was written. The question will arise, however, as to whether the
first sentence needed a tense change, seeing it was written yesterday.
(Although this isn’t true either—the review was actually written on the
Wednesday night with a view to being posted on the Thursday!) I will walk to
cupboard, where Dostoevsky’s skin is hanging on a coat hanger, awaiting its
body. The doorbell will ring. A fleshy bone arrangement with organs will stand
there and say: “Looking for Fyodor’s skin. Is he in?” I will wrinkle my
beautiful eyes. “How do you know your skin’s a she?” I will ask. “All women
will be brought low beneath the eyes of our Creator!” he will shout. “OK, cool
it, come in,” I’ll say. “Ooh, using contractions now, are we?” he’ll ask. I’ll
say: “Yup.”
10 April
I started to read The
Diary of a Nobody. I thought how clever it might be to write a spoof
review, using surreal antics as a contrast to the novel’s straight-laced
satire. I realised that would probably be a mistake.
11. Joe Matt — The Poor
Bastard
This strip collects Joe Matt’s ‘Peepshow’ series into one
self-loathing volume. Seriously, the book groans when you open it, then whines
for an hour about how no hot hardbacks find its spine attractive. I wonder if
the makers of Channel 4 comedy ‘Peep Show’ took inspiration for their entirely
similar entertainment about two selfish losers from the strip? Hmm. Joe Matt’s
corny lovable self-parody makes for delightful reading. This really is a
one-joke affair of a perpetually selfish dufus exiling himself from the world
of girlfriends and regular sex into bedsits and chronic masturbation. Nothing
more to be said. Good fun. The aftermath of this pathetically believable
behaviour can be found in Spent.
12. Joe Matt — Spent
Joe Matt unleashes a vision of bachelor hell in this graphic
novel adaptation of Notes From
Underground. It isn’t really, but if there was ever a modern exploration of
Dostoevskyian self-loathing and seething hatred for mankind set in a shared
house in Canada,
it’s this frightening piece. A confession: for a brief period in my teens I
exhibited signs of such obsessive masturbatory proclivities (such as storing up
sex scenes on VHS for easy midnight use), but this ended when the hormonal
eruptions passed. This book explores a lifelong involvement with pornographic
movies over actual meaningful relationships. Most men have secret dirties on
their hard drives or materials for personal autoerotic use beyond adolescence,
and any denial of this fact is a LIE you horny losers, but the question
remains: why do men hate themselves so much? And is the answer simply, feebly:
because they can’t get women to like them?
Martin Amis said in an interview that it is pointless to
feel resentful towards women for refusing to like you, since they can detect a
bachelor’s simmering resentment and loneliness a mile off, and will keep as far
away as possible, thus trapping the bachelor in his woman-hating fume forever
and ever. Or words to that effect. So the easiest option for the nerd is to
face the potential humiliation and embarrassment of the dating scene and take
each gradual annihilation of confidence and self-respect on the chin. Hmm.
Thank God we have Geek2Geek in these enlightened times. This is scabrous
self-parody, fun but with worrying ramifications for the author’s sanity. Most
of it is probably charming exaggeration.
13. Fyodor Dostoevsky
— Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Fyodor is crotchetiest travel writer of the 19thC and this
diary reads like Jeremy Clarkson Goes to
France mixed with Karl Marx’s Further
Criticisms of the Bourgeois Superstructure: Paris Edition. Two unpublished
titles that sum up Fyodor’s critique of the French bourgeoisie, French
attitudes and French gentlemen. He hates those damn frogs! Baguette-chomping
cheese-eating surrender monkeys, set in their provincial ways! Curse those
swine! And don’t get Fyodor started on those Polish Jews, oh-no-no. Louses and
vermin and swine and mountebanks and rascals and all those other words that pop
up on every second page of Fyodor’s novels. One day the Russian workers will
seize control and form a benign Communist state, like the one in China, only
better! Fyodor can be quite funny at times, like Jeremy Clarkson, but then the
haze clears and the homespun bigotry and xenophobia stand there, hands-on-hips,
shaking their little heads. As another reviewer states, Fyodor’s non-fiction
was poor—try reading the perennially out-of-print Diary of a Writer for confirmation of that—but if you’re a
completist, it’s short and won’t try your patience too much.
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