Youth, oh Youth

Thursday July 24, 2008

Although just a week in, the new regime of strictly reading old books from my shelves and not buying new ones is working very well. Whilst searching for Graham Greene’s The Human Factor I accidentally toppled over a pile of books to reveal a yellowing 1975 edition of Joseph Conrad’s short story Youth coupled with the longer The End of the Tether. I dusted it down, climbed into the hammock – fitting for seafaring tales – and began to read.

Conrad was a favourite of mine as an English student. After studying a lot of 18th Century novels that appeared to bend over backwards to be authentic I found Conrad’s fiction absorbing because he obviously lived or observed at close quarters much of what went into the yarns he told. Youth is like that – the absolute determination of a young sailor to get to Bangkok in the face of madness personified by a ship that is sinking one half of the time and is on fire the other. It breathes its realism and Conrad doesn’t appear to try hard to achieve this; the prose comes from the pen of a seasoned sea dog, although he only uses this in making it all seem authentic. His personal experiences of the sea just appear to leak into his writing. And just as the life at sea over a century ago appears totally alien to me as a reader – and I snuggle comfortably and safely into my hammock all the more for it – so does the idealism and arrogance of youth. Being so young is as distant to me now as the far off lands that the young Marlow dreamt of. Is Conrad playing on my desire to be youthful again?

This is a brilliantly written piece that matches the acute characterisation and intensity of Heart of Darkness. I like the way Conrad draws you into a tale within a tale and then draws you out again – Marlow interrupting his narrative with the occasional request to his friends at the table to “pass the bottle”. And like Heart of Darkness it’s also very dense; only forty odd pages long yet I came out of it feeling like I’d digested a full length novel. The companion piece, The End of the Tether, is much more sober and nowhere near as enjoyable, although it’s look at old age makes it an obviously fitting companion and it’s well worth reading the two together. But it may leave you on a downer, Marlow’s early idealism now even more distant.

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The Quiet American

Tuesday July 22, 2008

For a self-imposed challenge I’ve decided not to buy any more books this year. Instead I’ll be trawling through my dusty bookshelves to read the countless unread books that I already own. First up is Graham Greene’s 1955 novel The Quiet American. Set in Vietnam, it follows the uneasy relationship between Thomas Fowler, an ageing and boozy English reporter, and Alden Pyle, a young and idealistic American. The unease between them is provided by Phuong, the lover of Fowler, who the younger man falls for. The book begins with the death of Pyle, and Fowler remembers the preceding months in flashback. How Pyle makes a bid for Phuong, how Fowler deceives them into thinking that his wife in England will divorce him and how Pyle goes on to heroically save the older man’s life. The Quiet American draws to a close with Fowler discovering Pyle’s secret terrorist activities, and deciding if his decision to act on impulse and stop him is a worthy decision or a personal one.

At first I was nervous about reading this novel. Sometimes my history is sketchy, and I wanted to avoid having to revise the history of Vietnam in order to enjoy the book. This isn’t really necessary and The Quiet American has aged very well, with its setting easily reset in any contemporary war zone. Unfortunately any reader will find the background events of conflict and cruelty familiar. This is the enduring, and perhaps ironic, strength of the book. Fowler is also a recognisably flawed hero, and it takes only a small amount of effort to remove any images of the two cinema personifications of him, namely Michael Caine and Michael Redgrave, from the mind. Greene’s writing style always fascinates. It’s a quiet novel; very brief and often understated. It was like listening to a very faint but still compelling voice. I had to concentrate on it and move as close as I could, but the prose was far superior than anything I’ve read in a long time. It’s a masterful work.

If I was forced to make a criticism at all I would probably opt for questioning the portrayal of Phuong, who comes across very much as the unequal side of the love triangle. She’s a too passive character, and we learn little about her other than her quaint confusion between England and America (she asks Fowler if there are skyscrapers in London – remember it’s only 1955) and the novel very much rests on the Fowler vs Pyle fulcrum. There’s some great tension in their encounters. Where the novel also falls down is, oddly, during one of its strongest passages. Stranded after curfew when their car runs out of petrol, the two men seek sanctuary in a lookout tower. Fearing for their lives, they embark on a thorough, lucid and well-reasoned political debate when in reality they’d probably do no more than whisper “shit!” at their dangerous predicament. Greene can create scene and atmosphere perfectly but, like Fowler, he appears numb to the life threatening dangers of the war zone. Such is life.

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My Struggle

Friday July 18, 2008

I’m struggling with Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn. The novel is perfect for holiday reading, and last Sunday I breezed through a couple of hundred pages as we sat by the swimming pool during our trial day at the local sports club. No sports for me, just lazing and reading. However, One Good Turn isn’t suitable for ordinary life, for which I mean overcast days and work. It isn’t gripping enough for quickly snatched lunch breaks and bedside reading. If I’m too tired and too distracted Kate Atkinson isn’t good enough for me. Sigh.

Perhaps my problem is that I need to keep away from the three for two tables. Writing about books means sharing the experience of them, and there might be no point in sharing the experience of popular books. I don’t mean being deliberately obscure, but finding a comfortable middle ground; sharing books that others may have heard of and who may be looking for some thoughts before they take the plunge. Bestseller lists or three for twos might not be supplying the best titles?

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David Sedaris

Wednesday July 9, 2008

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren’t enough euros to go round. “The entire EU is short on coins.”
And I say, “Really?” because there are plenty of them in Germany. I’m never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian casiers, who are, in a word, lazy.

When you are Engulfed in Flames is my introduction to the writing of David Sedaris. This is a collection of loosely connected autobiographical pieces, and the writing has a neat line in self deprecating humour and is full of excellent observations on the everday; it’s the kind of writing I suspect we all aspire to. It’s also the sort of thing you’d expect to find in the pages of the New Yorker, prose that’s as well crafted and nourishing as a good and wholesome meal.

David Sedaris: When you are Engulfed in Flames

His sixth publication, I’m late to the Sedaris world. His pieces come across as very compact, well-constructed short stories, although this book is officially categorised as autobiography. Sedaris is best when writing about himself and his view of the world; his Greek heritage, upbringing, life as a writer and its odd encounters, addictions, his homosexuality. He also touches on death and all it threatens, a subject he cannot help veering towards. There are also two hilarous accounts of airline travel, where in one he manages to deposit a sucked throat lozenge on a sleeping woman’s lap, and in another he sits beside a weeping, and ultimately irritating, man. The best however is the last section of the book, The Smoking Section, where Sedaris moves to Tokyo for three months in an attempt to give up smoking and to learn Japanese. He only succeeds with one of these goals. This was a highly enjoyable book that I polished off in two days. I look forward to more of his musings.

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Bit of a Blur

Sunday July 6, 2008

Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur. He has an easy, engaging writing style of his own that strolls through his time as bass player with Blur, living a booze-fuelled hedonistic lifestyle in the 1990s. He’s proud of the achievement of one of the most successful bands of that decade, but he’s also fond of recounting stories of drinking in the Groucho Club and his friendship with Damien Hirst and Keith Allen. James comes across as a pleasant enough chap, but he can’t help also revealing that he’s been incredibly lucky, sailing through his life and grasping all of the amazing opportunities offered to him.

Alex James: Bit of a Blur

Blur peaked in 1994 and 1995, following the incredibly successful (and also very good) album Parklife with their part in Britpop and the much talked about public battle with Oasis. James talks less about this that you might expect, and most interesting is the few years in the early 90s that Blur spent struggling; a run of very minor hit singles, a poor selling album and a lengthy US tour orchestrated to beat bankrupcy. Here is the seed for what could have been a very good book, although I suspect that James is very much aware that his fellow band members Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon were the talented ones. James was content to get drunk, look pretty and go along for the ride – he’s more at home writing about this than of any enduring artistic legacy.

Bit of a Blur gets the award for most reviewed paperback in British broadsheets this weekend. It’s also one of the best marketed books I’ve seen recently, although it could have been so much better, and I left it knowing little more than I already knew about a band I was so fond of in their heyday. The drinking and sexual exploits I could have done without. A bit of a bore really.

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