A Common Reader . . .

Review: The Unnamed - Joshua Ferris

I didn't particularly enjoy Joshua Ferris's last book, Then We Came To The End, perhaps because its theme (the tedium and chronic insecurity of modern office life) was a bit too close to home at that time.  Many of the events in it paralleled my own experiences a little too painfully.  Fortunately those days are now gone and I was in a happier mood to read The Unnamed, and I thought it was a much better book, original in both theme and execution.

This is a great book for walkers, but in a rather perverse way.  Not for lawyer Tim (the main focus of the book), a gentle stroll through quiet countryside, but rather a compulsive need to take-off, in an OCD type of way, a driven emigration from family, work and comfort into the snowy outer wastes of the city, however inadequately dressed, whatever the time of day and night. 

Tim walks until he is exhausted and then gets found among the rubbish bins behind a Safeway, or knocks on someone's door asking for help.  He phones home and begs his wife to come out and save him, but has no idea where he is.  Telephoning the emergency services for help is pointless when you can't give your location.  This it a terrible and unique affliction which confounds doctors and specialists and could easily lead Tim to his death.

Tim doesn't know why he is possessed of this dangerous ailment.  He gets found miles from home and later a toe drops off from frost-bite.  His ambulatory episodes threaten his family life, his job and his mental stability.  His compulsion becomes life-threatening: he takes off without food or water, without money, and soon his wife makes him wear a rucksack all the time containing basic provisions.  The hiking boots and two pairs of socks do not look good in the law office.  

Like so many sufferers from bizarre conditions, Tim invents stories to explain his behaviour.  In order to explain his frequent disappearances from the office he tells his colleagues that his wife is dying from cancer.  This fabrication lead Tim into ever deeper layers of deception and the truth has to come out later, providing more shame and embarrassment.

Ferris is brilliant at describing the corporate consternation when a senior partner turns up for work in a bicycle helmet loaded with electronics to measure brain activity (the latest attempt by the medics to get to grips with Tim's affliction).  Unfortunately Tim also seems to have a very high embarrassment threshold and somehow fails to realise that wearing the helmet while representing a prestigious client in court is not such a good idea.  One can only feel sorry for the client, arraigned on a murder charge and represented by a lawyer so bizarrely attired.

We cannot help but feel for Tim as he is stripped of his partnership and then eventually returns to work as a staff attorney, no longer mixing it with the other partners but having to take whatever work he is given.  It takes him some time to realise his new status as Ferris continues his relentless exploitation of the twists and turns of office politics.  This is his forte, and anyone who has ever taken a part in office life will remember how status changes are so carefully monitored by colleagues - the way someone is moved from his own office to open-plan, the way an older, experienced person ends up working for someone young and up-coming.  

It would be a shame to reveal any more about this book - it would be just too easy to spoil.  After all, a theme as unique as this should be unpacked slowly one step at a time, something at which Joshua Ferris excels.  I found this book drew me on through Tim's tragedy and there are many unique aspects to it which I haven't mentioned in this review. 

This book is genuinely novel - I can't think of anything quite like it.  Its themes resonate well in a world of strange compulsions and phobias and in a way Tim's need to walk is something many people feel about getting out of their work-lives and heading off into the unknown.  Alas, the world he finds himself in is a dark and dangerous place and most people would feel its better to stay inside in the warm, even when the corporate stuff just seems too much to take. 

Review: The Other Wise Man - Henry Van Dyke

These days I find myself struggling with the Christmas thing.  Like most adults, I've lived through many of them.  I've had times when the whole Nativity has been tremendously meaningful to me, and other times when it barely passes through my consciousness - this year, the latter condition seems to apply.

But sooner or later, all those carols on the radio start to get to me - John Rutter's Candlelight Carol for example, or Harold Darke's arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter, or perhaps that most moving German Christmas song, Still, Still, Still, Weils Kindlein Schalfen Will, sung so beautifully by Bryn Terfel on his album Simple Gifts.  

I suppose its something about a message based on an infant  "bringing down the mighty from their thrones", which runs so counter to the strong-flowing current of modern life.  And so I turn once again to The Other Wise Man.  I don't know how many times I've read it but it seems to resonate with my mood most years, when all the paraphernalia of Christmas overwhelms the story of a baby being born who somehow gives a glimmer of hope to those who wish to receive it.  You can find The Other Wise Man for free on the net on Project Gutenburg.  Its not very long and won't take more than half an hour or so to read. 

The Other Wise Man is a simple story of a fourth wise man, Artaban, a Zoroastrian scholar, who wants to travel with the other three Magi to follow the star, but keeps getting held up because he responds to people on the way who need his help.  The poor man arrives too late to see the baby, but then there's a catch at the end which seems to encapsulate the message of the Nativity and usually gets to me in one way or another.

I think what I like about the story, is that its for those who don't believe, those people who never quite grasp what religion is all about and perhaps don't even want to.  Its for people like me who don't really believe that anything happens to us when we die but still want to live as good a life as we can manage without really wanting to articulate why that might matter.

The author Henry Van Dyke was one of those men whose memory is lost in the mists of time, an American Presbyterian clergyman who wrote much about his faith, most of it long-forgotten.  Nowadays The Other Wise Man is the only book for which he is remembered, and the edition I have is only 60 pages long including illustrations such as the one on the right.  

Review: Legend of a Suicide - David Vann

I have been very pleased to read David Vann's Legend of a Suicide for it is an unusual book which provides a lot of insight into the painful journeys which have to be taken to come to terms with family tragedy.  The writer comes to this from many angles, much as a historian reviews a variety of sources in an attempt to arrive at a definitive account of what really happened.

The title of this book is interesting.  Clearly it is about suicide, or more specifically a suicide, but why "legend" rather than say, "story" or perhaps "memoir"?  And the main character, Jim Fenn: why is this name so similar to David Vann's own father, James Vann?  In fact we learn from the acknowledgements at the back of this book that David Vann is in fact writing about his father's suicide, and that the stories are fictional but "based on a lot that's true". 

The thing about a legend is that it may or may not be true.  Its something which has achieved an almost mythical status so I think we can say that David Vann's stories will go beyond the mere recounting of facts and will probe into the deeper meaning of his father's death, its long term effects and its outworking in the lives of those he left behind. 

At first this book appears to be a single text, a continuum, but again in the acknowledgements at the back, David Vann thanks his graduate school tutors for helping him see "how the stories might become a book".  And in fact we have here four linked short stories and one novella which together tell a sort of myth about the terrible events which happened to Vann when he was a young boy.

Review: Noah's Compass - Anne Tyler

Its that time of year when blog posts become less frequent - at least at A Common Reader.  I've managed six post during August but its been a struggle.  I'm at home for a week now and have some catching up to do.  I took the book below away on holiday with me and it provided ideal reading while sitting by the caravan in the Cotswolds.  Next week I go to France for ten days or so, so there will be another hiatus until mid-September.  I hope to publish two or three more this week however. 

The fact that I have read 11 of Anne Tyler's 18 novels suggests that I think highly of this fine author.  She is one of the few writers whose books I pre-order before publication and then devour, putting everything else aside for a few days, and then finding that for the next two weeks or so her characters keep coming back to me.

I'm not alone in my respect for this writer.  Anne Tyler was nominated 'the greatest living novelist writing in English' by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby, the latter saying, "everything changed for me when I read Anne Tyler, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Lorrie Moore, all in about '86-'87 … voice, tone, simplicity, humour, soul ...".

Tyler is a deeply humanistic writer who depicts the complexities of the human condition while making no attempt to judge or comment on what she sees.  We see people follow the tracks laid out for them, and the way these often appear to be dead-ends.  Her characters get "stuck", unable to move on, trapped in other people's disappointments and their own sense of failure.  And then Tyler works her magic, healing and redeeming through relationships, which often unexpectedly come into her peoples' lives in bizarre ways and cast a whole new light on her their characters. 

Tyler understands family more than most.  In real life, we know that families are rarely wholly supportive, being beset by sibling rivalry and parental criticism.  "Little brother" and "big sister" remain in those roles long into their middle and even old age. Tyler specialises in exploring this type-casting - when her families get together we know that the result is rarely happy.  

Review: Black Spring - Henry Miller

It is always a pleasure to read a new edition from One World Classics, particularly when the title is one I've not read before.  Black Spring was written between Miller's more well-known Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn and while it has not gained the stature of the other books, it is well worth a read in its own right.

First published in 1936, the book consists of ten almost independent (though linked) episodes covering Miller's early life in Brooklyn and the period when he was writing in Paris.  

The Wikipedia description of Miller's writing applies perfectly to this book: "mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism".  I have little doubt that while the work may be rooted in personal experience, this is more like an excursion from the bare bones of Miller's existence than a verifiable memoir rooted in the real-world.

The book was banned in the English-speaking world when it was first published in Paris, but the modern reader will again be surprised at what shocked earlier generations for there is nothing particularly salacious in it to the modern mind.  Perhaps American and British readers would have been shocked to the core at Miller's description of the Parisian urinals? - -

I go to the urinal to take a leak.  As I stand there looking up at the house fronts, a demure young woman leans out of a window to watch me.  How many times have I stood there in this smiling, gracious world, the sun splashing over me and the birds twittering crazily, and found a woman looking down at me from an open window, her smile crumbling into soft little bits which the birds gather in their beaks and desposit sometimes at the base of of a urinal where the water gurgles melodiously, and a man comes along with his fly open and pours the steaminng contents of his bladder over the dissolving crumbs

Review: Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk

Although I've heard of Chuck Palahniuk, particularly in the context of his highly successful novel Fight Club, I'd never read anything by him before until being sent  Pygmy through the post.  At first I was not sure that this was going be my sort of thing, but within a few pages I was hooked. 

Imagine a country containing an amalgamation of all the worst attributes of North Korea, Communist China and Nazi Germany.  Children are tested for their future educational and career needs at the age of four, and those who show high potential are whisked away from their parents into state institutions.  There they are brainwashed into complete subservience to the state, using a curriculum involving extreme martial arts, political indoctrination, chemical warfare and urban terrorism.

Now move forward to a mid-Western church in America where a female missionary feels such concern for these children that she arranges an exchange visit for a number of them to stay with American host-families.  The children arrive in America to have six months of respite from their harsh existence, and as the host-father puts it, to "to sing our songs and share the fellowship of our homes and church".  However, unbeknown to these generous-hearted families, these children have been given a plan:  their educators have shown them how to wreak "Operation Havoc", a terrible act of destruction on the evil American town in which they have come to stay.

This book is one of the funniest books I have read in a long time, but also immensely clever.  The whole book is written in the first person by one of the children, Operative 67, using a sort of pidgin American which takes some getting used to but provides considerable insight into the regime they have been brought up in. 

Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival mid-western American airport greater _______ area. Flight ____. Date ______. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name. Operation Havoc.

Fellow operatives already pass immigrant control, through secure doors and to embrace own other host family people. Operative Tibor, agent 23; operative Magda, agent 36; operative Ling, agent 19. All violate United States secure port of entry having success. Each now embedded among middle-income corrupt American family, all other homes, other schools, and neighbours of same city. By not after next today, strategy of web of operatives to be established.

Review: The Other - David Guterson

I came to The Other with mixed feelings as I tend to think of David Guterson as someone who's suffered from "second novel syndrome" - a brilliant start with Snow Falling on Cedars, followed by a rather mediocre second novel, East of the Montains.  His third novel, Our Lady of the Forest, was much better however and sticks in my memory to this day.

The Other is the story of two boys who grow up as life-long friends while following very different paths.  The narrator, Neil Countryman, meets John William Barry while competing in a running race.  A friendship develops between them and they both develop a love of the wilderness, taking long trips into the vast landscapes of what is now the North Cascades National Park in the Pacific North West. They also love literature, from Jack Kerouac, through to T S Eliot, taking in along the way a huge range of classic and contemporary books. 

Neil Countryman eventually decides to train as an English teacher, and marries and raises children.  Barry on the other hand ploughs a different furrow and becomes a mystically-inclined hermit who builds himself a cave dwelling in a remote part of the mountains, and his life revolves around survival skills and Gnostic literature.  Countryman visits Barry periodically and brings him supplies from civilisation and news of the outside world.  However, ultimately, Barry becomes achieves a sort of fame as The Hermit of The Hoh (mountain) and Countryman, his amanuensis.