On Evil

Reading Terry Eagleton either makes me feel incredibly clever ( “Literary Theory”, ”After Theory”) or incredibly stupid (“The Ideology Of The Aesthetic”, “Walter Benjamin, or Towards A Revolutionary Criticism”) His latest offerings have been slightly easier on the ego and “On Evil” is (for the most part) no exception. It's a whistle stop tour through Theology & Theodicy via, amongst others, Marx, Freud, Schopenhauer and Lacan. His argument ricochets through readings of “Macbeth”, “Brighton Rock”, “Pincher Martin” and “The Third Policeman” to arrive at a strangely unsatisfying conclusion.

Evil is something more than just wickedness after a workout.
Evil is purposeless, pointless, a non-rational “condition of being”. It’s aim is, accordingly anti-life, the void, nothingness. It’s like a passionless over-reaching Death-Drive. So while wickedness certainly abounds, Evil is, thankfully, very rare and “something we should not lose much sleep about”.

Unusually, this is one of Terry Eagleton’s conclusions that I could easily have arrived at independently although, obviously, not with the same rigour. Paradoxically this rigour may well be the problem - I’m not particularly patient. His meandering toward a final conclusion is never less than entertaining but I’m not entirely convinced it needed so many detours and 160 pages to get there.

Our Last Heaven Beast

There are any number of possible readings of Moby Dick. The only one that doesn’t particularly hold water is “it’s about a man’s pursuit of a whale”. It’s unarguably a politically charged allegory that abounds with metaphorical allusions and philosophical asides. Melville appropriates a hoary old myth to hang his metaphysical speculation upon.

In an inspired reversal Philip Hoare takes Moby Dick as the framework for an exploration of the history of mans relationship with whales. At times it makes for uncomfortable reading – there’s something almost unbearably poignant about the rendering of a whale by a furnace fuelled by its own blubber. Thankfully the catalogue of slaughter is punctuated by fascinating asides – “Leviathan” is as much a collection of facts and curiosities as it is a narrative of the parallel decline of the whaling industry and whales.

Whilst he’s clearly enamoured with whales he’s not some misty-eyed hippy. He’s careful to distance himself from some of the more outlandish claims of whale society and religion for instance. Although the Whales are not incidental, in common with Melville, he does have bigger fish to fry ( I know whales are mammals but bear with me ) - The conservationist argument bearing down is obviously meant to apply more widely.

So, finally, why the title? To save you googling - it’s a lyric from “Don’t Kill The Whale” - definitely not Yes’s finest moment. Although I bought the single I still used to think it was mawkish and the description a bit of a stretch. Now, having read Leviathan, I’m not so sure.

Antwerp

"….reality seems to me like a swarm of stray sentences”

At 76 pocket-sized pages and retailing at £11.43 on Amazon I feel a bit of A(n)twerp for buying it but it’s by Roberto Bolano so it was, for me, an unavoidable purchase. Bolano’s statement “It’s the only novel that doesn’t embarrass me” has, I think, more to do with the form than the content - Antwerp initially reads more like a highly fragmentary prose poem than a novel. Given it’s length it’s incredibly spacious – corpses, dwarves, detectives, prostitutes, poets and Bolano jockey for position in 56 loosely connected pieces. Gradually, however, a semi-coherent narrative unfolds - It’s a piece of DIY detective fiction where the sleuthing is about stitching together rather than unravelling plot lines.

Whether you’ll warm to Antwerp will probably depend on what you believe fiction to be. Saul Bellow, for whom Finnegan’s Wake was the indecipherable chatter of voices in a distant room, thought that fiction should be a conversation with the reader. Martin Amis finessed this. Fine writers like Bellow, he said, would also invite you into their home and give you the most comfortable chair by the fire. On the strength of Antwerp Bolano would leave you outside in the biting cold with nose pressed against the window straining to read his lips.