Books: The Gum Thief

Continuing my attempts to write something about every book I read.  Not as a "review" as such, but to encourage me to think a bit more about about them.  It looks like I can read books faster than I can write about them, as I have a backlog.

I think Douglas Coupland is one of those zeitgeisty authors.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  More that he tackles the modern condition openly.  And by "the modern condition" maybe what I mean is "first world problems".  I don't think I mean that in a bad way.

In case you haven't guessed, the Gum Thief is a story of people in America who feel trapped and unsatisfied with their lives.  I read it on a rainy Sunday when not leaving the flat was a rational plan, rather than something to fight against, and there didn't seem to be anything else to do.  When I started the book I thought "this is how I'm feeling".

I think the moral of The Gum Thief is that changing ourselves is very difficult, but through reaching out to others and trying to imaginatively live their lives, we can find connections and effect some kind of change.  It made me think about the experience of imagining yourself in someone else's position, trying to feel what they're feeling and what choices they might make.  I don't think I've thought about it much before.  It's not something I'm very good at, or at least I don't do it instinctively.  I'm bad enough at imaginatively inhabiting my own life, let alone someone else's.  So I probably go through a book or film, or similar story, without really connecting with the characters the way other people might.  I can't remember any examples of going "that was a particularly convincing character".  Though maybe it's only critics, authors and literature students, who think about these things too much, who say that, as I can't remember anyone I know saying it.

My main problem with the book was that it alternates letters/notes between the characters with sections from a terrible book one of them is writing.  It's amusing, but I don't want to spend too much time reading something that is deliberately terrible (and not deliberately terrible enough to be great).  The whole book's fairly short though, and breezes along, so it's not a big problem.

Books: The Fatal Eggs

Do you want to read some early Soviet sci-fi?  Of course you do.

A scientist's discovery of a ray that increases the growth and reproduction rate of animals leads to disaster when it is unwisely taken out of the laboratory in an attempt to feed the country.  The Fatal Eggs is obviously a satirical metaphor for the experience of Russia, but I don't think I really appreciated it.  Communism is something that should have been cautiously experimented with, but was seized upon by cruder and more urgent men?  At least I can appreciate the detail of early revolutionary Russia, and science fiction from a time when scientists accidentally creating monsters was still a fairly fresh idea.

Books: The Acid House

I'm not sure how I feel about short stories.  I find them very easy to read, but also rather unsatisfying.  This might be because I'm slow to empathise with characters and situations, so don't make those quick connections that are important for short stories.  Or it might be that because they're short and easy they don't make me feel like I've done some serious reading.

I read an essay about Trainspotting once, before I'd read the book, that argued that while the film had its good points, it failed to present Renton & co.'s lifestyle as a viable alternative.  Reading the Acid House, and in particular the novella A Smart Cunt, the contours of this alternative become more clear.  It's a lifestyle designed to enable the acquisition and use of various drugs.  The scale and urgency of use varies, but they are always an organising principle.  Casual work, benefits, itinerancy, canny union reps, the erratic kindness of friends and family, petty theft and dealing, rent and tax arrears.

The characters in Welsh's stories live on the margins but their lives don't seem precarious.  They have no careers, possessions, houses, happiness, dreams or people they really care about that they can lose.  The lack of formal structure in their lives gives them resilience.  The only things they really risk are their bodies, battered by drugs, police, thugs, friends, neglect.

Books: V for Vendetta

Continuing my attempt to write something about every book I read.

V for Vendetta starts off with a bit of a puzzle.  By page three of four, V has blown up the Houses of Parliament, an event you see for about one panel.  Apart from laying claim to Guy Fawkes' legacy (the blowing up bit at least, not the catholicism), this sets up an immediate question.  Even if it were just a jump-start for the character and story, it should be more dramatic.

My friend Dom's comment is that it is because V is very un-comic book.  The art eschews spectacle.  Most panels are close-in of a couple of characters.  Typically there's little movement other than characters walking around, and what physical action there is is short and sharp.  He also pointed out to me that the original was in black and white, making such spectacles harder.

Another factor is that in the Britain the comic portrays, Parliament no longer exists as a political body so lacks significance for the regime and the people.  But if this is the case, why is it a target for V?  The important point is a rejection of the political past.  V is not attacking the existing regime so that the England can return to enlightened parliamentary democracy; he is a lot more radical than that.

All that aside, I think it's simply something that is not handled especially well in the comic.

Anyway.  V for Vendetta is unusual in its explicit advocacy of a political ideology.  Large-scale anarchism seems particularly difficult to fit into any recognisable fictional narrative structure, as it's inherently decentralised, not centred around key characters.  A story which features a superhero, of a kind, must strike a particularly fine balance between this individual driving events and showing the empowerment of the broader populace.

The masterstroke of V is to make the hero both an individual and also faceless and replaceable, someone we could all be (a statement with multiple meanings).  All the same, I'm not sure how convincing it really is.  Had V not had truly exceptional capabilities from the start, then surely things would have been very different.  He is only replaceable once his plan has reached fruition.  The script of the play has run its course and the audience are left to take up the actor's roles, but where would they be without that prologue?

Moore's psychological view of liberation is (surprisingly?) a fairly crude one.  There are two processes.  One is the exposure to the masses of the regime's weakness.  This is straightforward and unoriginal.  In the comic's terms, show the system is a charade, and let everybody become an actor.

The other is that which liberates V, Evie and Rose Almond - being abused until their fears are stripped away to a fearless core.  I'll just pick up one issue with that - that empirically it is a very questionable idea.  While Libya and Syria provide contemporary examples of people who say that they have simply been pushed too far and found dignity and freedom stronger urges than life and fear, the holocaust provides us with the example of learned helplessness.  I don't think many go through incarceration and torture and come out psychologically stronger than before.

A strident call for anti-authoritarianism and independence, then, but a problematic model to follow.

Books: Titus Groan

I find it hard to believe that I last read Titus Groan when I was thirteen or fourteen. I always meant to re-read it, but never did. (My parents' copy of Titus Groan went missing, which didn't help.) So while I'd say it's a favourite and important book to me, it was half my life ago that I read it.

Titus Groan is still not quite like anything else I've read. Strangely, it reminds me slightly of JG Ballard, though I can't say why. The exaggerated, slightly hallucinatory quality, perhaps.

When I first read the book I found it very hard to read. The prose of Titus Groan is like its setting: ornate, sometimes tortuous, often obscure. This time round, I found it much easier going, though there was still the odd word I didn't know ("hanger"). I also found it exceptionally strange and unrelentingly dark.

The biggest changes in my experience of the book were in the humour and the characters. I think the first time I was so submerged by the darkness that I didn't appreciate the humour. This time I realised how genuinely funny some of the characters and absurdities are. On a number of occasions I was chuckling out loud.

In a similar way I appreciated the characters better. Some are clearly evil or vile, both enabled and constrained, by their situation. Others are unusual, certainly, but pushed to extremes to cope with their situation. The Countess' withdrawal from human contact as a way to withdraw herself mentally from the drudgery of ritual and those whose company she is forced to keep. The twins' nature encouraged into spite and ignorance. Flay, taciturn and hard, but loyal and even dear to those who know him.

Most of all though, the doctor and Fuschia. Despite aloof, affected appearances, the doctor is a thoughtful, compassionate man. As he himself thinks, the others have responsibility towards ritual, but he has responsibilities towards them and their wellbeing. Of all, Fuschia is most tragically trapped. The doctor's intellect at least provides an escape of sorts. Fuschia feels the oppression of Gormenghast, but has only childish escapes, no-one to teach her or provide an example to follow, and no-one to offer or receive the tenderness that would relieve her (save, in all counts, the little Prunesquallor can offer). All this leaving her horribly vulnerable to Steerpike's manipulation. The book leaves you with a sense of foreboding for these two. If the Gormenghast is bad, the realisation of Steerpike's ambitions would be worse.

The adult characters all the characters either suffer a withering of the spirit, or restrain and canalise it, into brutality, birds and cats, an obsession with being a lady. It's this prospect that faces Fuschia. And it's this that is made physical in the Bright Carvers and their sudden decline from vibrant youth to premature age.

Of Steerpike himself, I am not sure how much there is to see beyond the fact he is a psychopath.
Steerpike is not alone in feeling nothing for other people. His success rests on the fact that he cares nothing for the system. For all the other characters, good and bad, Gormenghast is a part of them, just as they are part of it. Steerpike is constantly referred to as an outsider, even though there is no hint of anything odd in his origins (just a kitchen boy). Rather, he is an outsider because people subconsciously realise he cares nothing for Gormenghast.

The only other character to want (in a vague way) to throw down the system like this is Fuschia, and it's what makes her seem so vulnerable to Steerpike. On the other hand, he is unable to recognise the casual cruelty that repulses her and counteracts his efforts to charm.

There is an ambiguity in the book here, that only the most heartless character is able to challenge a heartless system. Does respect for others mean respect for the system, either for itself or for their sakes? Are all revolutionaries cruel, or even psychopathic? Or is Steerpike simply the only person with all the right characteristics - intelligence, art, luck, motivation?

One thing that made me prevaricate about reading the book a little was the feeling that it was a cold, dark winter book. That's not really true though. Titus Groan crosses many seasons and weathers. The only common feature of the weather is that it conspires to oppress the characters; it is always overwhelming either in its violence, like the titanic downpour during Swelter and Flay's confrontation, or in its relentlessness. Even more than the harsh, sparsely described landscape, the weather provides an expressionistic accompaniment to, or rendering of, the events.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about re-reading Titus Groan is that I found that literally all the events I remember from the trilogy come from the first book. Flay and Swelter, Flay's cat-throwing banishment, the burning of the library, the death of Sepulchrave. I am wondering what on earth goes on in the second book that I have forgotten, and whether it will be familiar to me when I read it.

One thing that hasn't changed is that I still can't describe the book in a satisfying way, in a way that really gets across how it feels.