What’s the smallest book you’ve ever read?
This edition of a Borges story is smaller than a teabag. I found it in Buenos Aires, the best city on earth for books and bookshops of all shapes and sizes. Following an accident, Funes is condemned to remember every detail of his life as a unique event that cannot be compared to any other, so that he is unable to generalize, see patterns, or make connections. He cannot, therefore, speak meaningfully of his experience. Borges speculates on a language in which the perception of every animal and leaf and stone in its particular moment would have its own noun. Any such language would, of course, be an endless, indefinable accumulation. The idea points interestingly to the insufficiency of language when faced with uncapturable reality. It is also quintessential Borges, who, in his obsessive pursuit of the idea of the perfection of knowledge, typically ends up creating abstract meta-libraries of the mind. That’s quite a lot for a little book. I’m just surprised that he didn’t take it one neurotic, philosophical step further and propose vocabulary for the experiences of the “gaps” between Funes’s focussed perceptions, seeing as there are no such gaps, only a continuous flow. I don’t care for Borges myself. In fiction, I look for real-life characters, not ciphers for intellectual conjectures. Without depth or feeling, his craftsmanship remains another extremely clever yet lifeless language. Ireneo Funes, by the way, is from Fray Bentos, which British readers may be curious to learn is not a corned beef factory but a city in Uruguay. The green peppers are the first from the garden this summer and have gone into a chili con carne. The teabag is Yorkshire and made a very nice cuppa.
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When the lead character is likeably flawed, I love a good private detective series.
The fictional world has to be convincingly real and the stories must have pace, and you can play around with the paradigm, but you can’t beat the purity of the classical format. Kerr dreams up his own suitably hard-boiled, cynical, battle-scarred, tough guy and what kind of benign milieu does he give Bernie to operate in? 1930s Berlin, with the rise of Nazism as the background narrative, and semblances of ordinary decency in police work and society at large being eradicated. It’s the lone crusader archetype that gets me. Independent, but not egotistical. Successful, but not always. Unorthodox, but not too much. With a conscience, but a stained one. Philip Kerr’s wife, Jane, wrote: “He loved to paint Bernie into an ethical corner ‘so he can’t cross the floor without getting paint on his shoes.’” Each book in the series gives us a self-contained case and a darn good mystery to be solved. We accompany Bernie Gunther as he deals with corrupt, unsavoury individuals and historical political villains in his own inimitable way, speaking his mind with dark irony and pithy observations on the human condition in such a way that he just about manages to get away with it. Goebbels, for instance, might have shot another man, but the straight-talking, politically suspect Gunther he finds amusing, and provisionally spares him. The Bernie story develops and extends beyond Germany and the original time frame, so that we also find him pursuing malfeasants in Argentina and the French Riviera. Philip Kerr was very unwell and struggling by the end of the series, so that Metropolis just doesn’t have the dynamic verve of the rest, but don’t let that put you off. Bernie Gunther is your definitive anti-hero and you have a solid oeuvre of fourteen thrillers to enjoy him in. A book so unsettling I had to put it down various times. Shoot or be shot: which would you choose? Decency or cruelty is contingent on circumstance and I, too, human all-too-human, have the inherent potentiality for both. If someone allows you to do a kindness, that is a considerable favour.
The story begins with a lone, injured, amnesiac, ten-year old, black girl. She is lost outside, somewhere in the USA, and doesn’t know who or what she is.
Vulnerable, or what? Butler’s brilliant idea is to give her small protagonist significant power, tempered by a virtuous character. Shori turns out to be a vampire and doesn’t mean anyone any harm, but hey, a girl gotta eat. Shori doesn’t recall anything and so we find ourselves along for the ride of finding out with her, all the while knowing that ignorance spells danger. Protective and loving of those whose blood she craves, Shori is brave and self-assured, but at risk. She is 53, but a child in appearance, so that when she and Wright have sex, you’d expect all kinds of alarm bells to be going off, but Butler has the delicacy and the skill to present it as legitimate and adult. The vampire is the stronger, the faster, the one in charge. She has a robust intellect and it is her choice. Rather than innocent or mature, Shori has an ageless self-possession. Butler is superbly organized and deft in the unforced way that she presents new information and characters, so that one is always clear about what is going on and why. I admire this as a writer as much as I appreciate it as a reader. She also achieves the difficult feat of making ethical leadership not just admirable, but interesting. Fledgling is a book for truth, and respect for justice, and diverse consensual relationship arrangements. The vampire-human symbiosis is a reflection on human interdependence and the responsibility that corresponds to power over others. But primarily, or ultimately, it’s a stirring human story, of a plucky young woman with the chance of a life, if she can but survive. The premise of science fiction/fantasy is that there is so much more to reality than what meets the eye and is subsequently interpreted by the brain. Once you get that, the genre can go on to have all the fun and games that it likes, as long as it’s consistent and credible. If there’s a stimulating conversation going on with your unconscious, the storyline can be anything at all.
In Tim Powers’ novels, the particular premise is that events have a far more fascinating explanation that we imagine. In Three Days to Never, historical figures such as Chaplin and Philby lead the same lives, but there is another dimension to them of which we knew nothing. Of his equally brilliant Declare, Powers said: “I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar—and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.” The same principle is at work in this book set in 1980s California. I love the grittiness in Tim Powers’ books, that sense of dirt and oil which lets you know that we are in the real world, and where the supernatural is so called simply because we haven’t noticed or woken up to it. It brought to mind Soviet Russia’s serious research into telekinesis at this time and I thought how the pragmatic militaries of the superpowers would unhesitatingly add any such proven abilities—and magic, too—to their armament as one more useful element. Take the talent and weaponize it. Historical events are unchanged and respected, but the causes now acquire a supernatural depth. The story, though, is about vulnerable individuals. We care about Frank and his daughter, Daphne, and the danger they face seems very real. Powers’ writing has a wacky seriousness that I delight in. The supernatural can be induced or triggered by a VHS tape or a device in a garden shed; Charlie Chaplin is linked with Einstein in strange, mystical subterfuge; and Mossad—as no-nonsense a secret service as you can get—drive around with a semi-alive head in the back of their van that they use as a kabbalistic antenna. Featured here not because I have anything new or interesting to say about it, but simply because any reading list in my life would be incomplete without it. Tolkien can transport anyone to the mythic realm at the drop of an elf’s hat, and send me just with his instinct for names.
Tolkien was a brummie, bless ’is heart. My auntie and gran lived in Moseley, walking distance from the Dell and Sarehole Mill, inspirational settings for the Shire in Lords of the Rings, which let’s face it, is a bit of alroyt. The charm of the concept is that it is entirely credible that a hidden London might physically exist beneath street level.
Door is its rabbit hole to this Wonderland, its wardrobe to Narnia, although there the similarity ends, because London Below is no fantasy, but as factually real as the city we know, and exists in conjunction with it. Even though it is a place of magic, it is subject to limitations of its own and the primary challenge is that of survival when confronted with Underdwellers. The adventure is fraught with danger and cruelty and full of novelty. Gaiman lures us into suspending disbelief by lending significance and protagonism to everyday elements and people that we might overlook, such as homeless rough sleepers. It is a nice touch that these assume a greater role for once, also to make the Angel, Islington into a character, and for there to be a real Baron of Baron’s Court: it all delights the reader with beguiling imagination. As soon as you have a hero going underground, an unconscious quest of some kind is going on. The treatment can be whatever you wish; I am partial to serious fun and Neverwhere is just that. This, to me, is what fantastical writing is all about: a believable story with elements of mythic adventure that takes us on an entertaining journey, giving us characters (Richard and Door) that we care and root for, all the while suggesting other dimensions to everyday reality that we are commonly blind to, or another way of living this one. Playing the game of life on a different board, where the same values hold, but the struggles of body and soul have a heightened drama. Some books are just Very Special. Le Guin conjures up a people, a land, an entire culture. Their tales, dances, poems, symbols, drawings, songs, customs, their maps and alphabet. An imaginary northern Californian utopia about people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now.”
“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality…” Ursula Le Guin (“Freedom”) Yes, I like it so much I got three.
We’re back out on the highways of the USA looking for freedom and redemption. Liking a variety of fiction is as natural as liking different kinds of people. One close to my heart is that subtly exciting world that’s as real as the street that you live on, the difference being that the magical can slip through the interstices and you might just meet a local god in the laundrette. In other words: a more interesting world and a consciousness enriched by archetypes from the equally real, yet hidden unconscious. American Gods does this wonderfully well. Neil Gaiman, Shadow and Mr Wednesday take us on a joyride through the squalid landscapes of the American soul. A place where old gods can take a foothold and, yes: that means trouble. I was so taken with the possibilities that I gave Odin another outing in my John Eyre. Neil’s agent assured me that the Norse god was in the public domain and that it was just fine. I really hoped to enjoy the TV adaptation of American Gods, but it was just trashy. Gaiman’s world is best left to come alive in each reader’s imagination. I’m told that such fiction, which I took to myself in Hoodwink and John Eyre, has a sub-genre all to itself: “urban fantasy.” Well, why not? Way I see it, if you get the broad intent behind genres, it's simply a question of making them work for you. Whenever I wanted a new Philip K. Dick title, I would typically get a cheap second-hand copy from the late, great Mike Don and his Dreamberry Wine listing, who would mail it on trust of receiving a cheque by return, for the price of the book plus the value of the stamps.
On this occasion, I happened upon one that I hadn’t read at a book stall at Wat Buddhapadipa, a full-blown Thai Buddhist temple in the leafy suburbia of Wimbledon, an incongruity that I am sure Dick (and Mike) would have admired. And yet, on rereading it thirty years later, I find it’s just not very good. The plot’s uninspiring (although the prospect of Hermann Goering’s reappearance got my pulse racing for a while); the characters, such as the paranoid psychokinetic pianist, Kongrosion, are difficult to like, the disparate groups and players and ideas don’t hang together and the novel’s brought to a hurried, unsatisfying end. But what can I say? It’s still Phil Dick. I enjoyed it well enough along with all the others way back when and it constitutes another brick in The Wonderful World That Dick Made. It features the adorable empathic papoola and the brilliant idea of adverts that torment and fight a way into your home where you have to splat them like the pests that they are. I remember that after the meditation session at the Wat Buddhapadipa, everyone except me filed out to go and have tea and talk about it. I was left behind, unable to move my stiffly locked legs after sitting in lotus position. Eventually, I toppled myself onto one side to slowly, painfully extend my limbs and get to my feet. Then wandered home clutching my Dick. |
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