April / May Bookclub

Just a very brief post to remind everyone of the next meeting. We're meeting at the Old Monkey on Portland Street. I've booked the restaurant for 8.30. It's not far away so if you can get there for 8'ish there will still be time for a quick drink.

Book Clearout

We have had a "bit of a clearout" of books from our "library". The book shelves in the back room were over-flowing with books, and we have had a cull. Interestingly, it is the crime fiction that has taken the blows and bullets on behalf of its more literary siblings.

There is a box of around 150 waiting to be disposed of (to a friend at the running club), with lots of Ian Rankin, PD James, Lee Child, Andrew Kavlan, etc.

The question is: could you bring yourself to give away a chunk of the books you have read and enjoyed over the years?

Our main criteria was: would we read them again? Would we want to press them into the sweaty palms of a friend and say "you must read this!"? The books that made it into the box failed the test, I am afraid.

It gives me some empty(ish) shelf space to fill up again....

Bright Young Things

Bright Young Things opens with a series of lightly drawn character sketches. Anne, Jamie, Thea, Bryn, Emily, and Paul are all looking for a something that answering an ad for “Bright Young Things” in some undisclosed way fulfils. After their interview they wake to find themselves on a small island outside a deserted, but well provisioned, house.

Six students in a house with plenty of alcohol but no TV - “Truth or Dare” anyone? If their fantasies and fears are anything to go by “Bright Young Things” are clearly fragile young things. They lead voyeuristic lives filled with video games, soaps, cartoons & film. Books rate rarely a mention. (There’s a library in the house but it’s never used)

Thus they swap their metaphysical isolation for a geographical one. Like previous Scarlett Thomas outings the plot is often a device. This time it's an excuse for extended commentary on Consumerism - The students are consumed with and by it. It’s no surprise that there’s initially little effort applied to escape - If your life is so hollowed out then you’ve not got much to go back for.

As a novel It's deceptively simple ( or maybe I am ) and although it wouldn't be one of my desert island books it's not one for the beach either.

Seaside

Suicide is painless…
Laura Carter’s signed suicide note is found next to her lifeless body. Not much scope for a mystery here until Laura’s identical twin Alex claims she’s Laura. Local recluse and crime writer Emma Winter hires Lily Pascale to establish the truth - cue philosophical musings on identity and “the Other”. The search for the twin’s identity runs parallel with Lily’s search for her own. In fact it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the mystery is the sub plot and cipher for Lily’s/Scarlett’s soul searching.

it brings on many changes ….
Not exactly new territory but, hindsight being a wonderful thing, you can detect a shift toward the themes of “The End Of Mr Y” and sense the character Lily is spent. "Suicide" (Seaside) is the last of the series and Scarlett has, by the books end, effectively killed her off (Given the identity a kind of virtual suicide?)

And I can take or leave it if I please…..
I won’t be pressing this one into the hands of friends and acquaintances but I will be picking up “Bright Young Things”

I’ve recently been reading Scarlett Thomas – “The End Of Mr Y” was our bookclub book in November last year and I snapped up the back catalogue on the strength of it. “Dead Clever” introduces Lily Pascale lecturer in Literary Theory specialising in Crime Fiction and reluctant amateur sleuth. “Write about what you know” is the standard injunction to the would-be novelist so it’s no surprise to find Scarlett Thomas is a Lecturer in Literary Theory specialising in Crime fiction. It’s a neat dodge if you can get away with it - There can never really be any question about the validity of the narrative voice. Another advantage of the day job is that anything that skirts on or near the edge of cliché can be passed off as playing with the conventions - Her colleague Fenn Baker with his PhD on “The Heroine in Romantic Literature” bears more than a passing resemblance to Heathcliff, and true to form their romance is frustrated by Fenn’s honour (A drunken indiscretion leaves a student pregnant and he does “the right thing”). The student lectures create the opportunity for some clever pastiches of genre fiction which suggest it’s deliberate.

The second novel “In Your Face” confirms this. It switches back to London and whilst it still “nods and winks to the camera” is probably (I haven’t read much Crime Fiction) more traditional. It leverages “Dead Clever” but doesn’t rely on it and the distance from the university creates more “literary space”. There are the occasional narcissistic lapses – Lily is nearly always described as stunning, a genius, brilliant, etc.. but then Philip Roth’s new novel is apparently about a New York Jewish Professor of Literature “turning” a stunningly attractive 30 year old lesbian literary scholar so fairs fair!

All in all, so far, I’d say I was a fan but not quite a fanatic. That said I have lined up “Seaside” for my next read so it probably depends on what your definition of fanatic is?

The Part About Archimboldi

“The Part About Archimboldi” is the fifth and final part of 2666. Archimboldi is the much fawned over novelist at the centre of “The Part About The Critics” and the device that holds 2666 together (albeit loosely). We follow Hans Reiter’s progress from lacklustre and lonely childhood through the October Revolution, Stalin’s purges, WW2, Dracula’s castle and the sexploits and eventual demise of a priapic Romanian general, to arrive in a prisoner of war camp. Here he meets the pseudonymous Zeller who turns out to have orchestrated the execution of several hundred misdirected Jews (misdirected in the sense that they arrived on his “doorstep” rather than at Auschwitz). The arrangements surrounding the piecemeal slaughter are something of a bureaucratic inconvenience for Zeller. His listless recounting of the piecemeal slaughter is mirrored in the reporting of his murder. Although at this stage his identity has yet to be properly revealed, Hans Reiter (Writer) will later surface as Archimboldi an alias that is more than a nom de plume - Reiter strangled Zeller in what may be his single most civilising act. - There really is no document of civilisation that is not at the same time a record of barbarism.

Whilst 2666 is much preoccupied with the problem of “evil” it is also concerned with reputation. Bolano’s reputation as a novelist had been building toward the end of his life and it’s not unreasonable to assume that Amalfitano’s opinion of the pharmacist is his own -

"He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick. . .A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox. . .even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown."

Maybe there’s an element of special pleading in criticising someone who prefers the shorter works of the masters to the masterpieces .There are enough references to masterpieces to be fairly sure Bolano thought he was writing one. The reflections on literary longevity, however, suggest some doubt. They’re strikingly similar to Julian Barnes’s “Nothing To Be Frightened Of”. There comes a time when almost every writer is read for the last time. Their last reader dies and with them all trace of the author. So fame for most writers is transient and posterity is ultimately elusive. Most cannot choose how or even if they are remembered - Archimboldi’s father whose dying wish is to be buried with full military honours is slung into a common pit by his wife and daughter!, the German writer Furst-Puckler more famous as the inventor of Neapolitan(?) Ice-Cream.

Much has been made of the date 2666 as being enigmatic. It alludes to a sentence in “Amulet” that describes a deserted street as like

“a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else”

Maybe it’s simpler than that. Perhaps its’ Bolanos way of saying that by 2666 none of this will matter?

The joy of bargain books

I was in The Works last weekend - a chain of bookshops specialising in remainders that are a feature of many British High Streets. A few years ago, I think they went into administration, as the Oldham branch was closed for around a year, before reopening around 9 months ago. When they did reopen, I guess they had problems sourcing stock, as they did not have many paperbacks in stock.

Anyway, the position has changed significantly. When I was in, they had 200+ different titles in their "3 for £5 or £1.99 each" offer, with lots of interesting titles. Having said that, I only bought one book, but it was a real bargain. I was going to buy "The Tiger That Isn't" by Blastland and Dilnot at full price in Waterstones, but they had a really nice copy of the original "posh paperback" edition (RRP of £12.99) in their offer - quite a result. They also had the large format version of the excellent Bad Science in the offer.

Only had a skim of the first few pages of TTTI, but it looks really good. The authors present the Radio4 show, More or Less, that specialises in the statistics of everyday life, so it is right up my street.

I'll post a review when I have finished.