Postmortemism

The idea of modernism and postmodernism have always fascinated me, to the extent where I have declared myself 'not interested' in reading all of 'the usual classics' (the Brontes, Dickens, y'know...), because they say little to me about my life, whereas the general jankiness of the more recent movements packs a properer punch. Anyway, here we all are, sitting in a rainbow, and then I read this article by Alison Gibbons, saying [postmodernism] is dead (though I guess certain people have been variously saying it was never alive, or died longer ago... Many opinions, I'm sure), but they're not saying it's dead they're just saying that its techniques are being used in different ways, and for different aims. The facets of production, style and whatnot can be the same, but the idea is that, rather than the literature (and the experimentalism) being the point in and of itself, now it is suggested that the helmsperson is steering the authorial ship towards specific issues, racism being an example.

I had a few problems with the article, not least that I've heard this argument for justice before, in some article about the necessity of climate change fiction, but honestly I'm not sure how much I buy it. I'm not convinced on the level of distribution (is fiction read by the people it needs to be? Obviously any one person can be inspired to make a change, but I'm talking 'will it convince Trump to stop being a nob, or will it make old Enid Fairbottom from down the road take her recycling more seriously?' Will most of the liberal folk that need no encouragement to consume literature not already have these views - much like sharing Corbyn memes on Facebook that only your similarly-minded friends see?) and the efficacy of the form itself (do we change our lives because of fiction, or do we feel stimulated, but not act? Do we, in the end, simply feel entertained? Of course that depends on the person (a lazy, narcissistic, anxious arsehole like myself is not moved to change very easily) and the potency of the piece (clearly your Margaret Atwoods are adept at creating narratives that get large swathes of people engaging meaningfully with topics and enjoying/getting freaked out by what she's saying).

Also, I question the labelling of it. I know this was quite a wee article, y'know, not some thesis dissecting millions of examples, but I wondered 'who actually says it's even waning in popularity?' Then I thought, 'you can trust the TLS, surely, they know what they're on about'. Then I thought that labelling something as dying, or whatever, could directly change someone's perceptions, even if there's no evidence. It's sort of like sticking a pube into someone's ice-cream. You made the choice to do it, and even if it's only touching one chocolate chip, the rest of the mint-choc-chip laden cone might well be chucked. Stupid analogy and an over-exaggeration, but, I suppose all I'm saying is, it's weird to call it 'as it's happening'. Feels a bit soon. Gibbons does address this, saying that the situation's "in flux", but if I'm writing a post, and there's a logical contradiction in the reason for writing it, sometimes I just have to say 'bin it'. What's the point in publishing it if you're not confident that there's any point, any benefit?

Though I suppose she's at least created debate. Which is more than I'm doing.

I'm just rambling.

Where's that delete button...

A Time To Read

A very dear friend of mine bought me John Grisham's A Time to Kill for Christmas last year, and as thanks to him, I'm gonna discuss it here. Also, it's to help me explore my thoughts on more traditional narrative styles and hopefully encourage people to pick up a book, if they ain't already reading one.

I'd seen Joel Schumacher's 1996 film of the same name a long time ago and really liked it, but since I knew the plot already, my reading of it was different to what it might have been. Naturally I drew comparisons between both visions as I read, contrasting Grisham's balding Jake Brigance (our hero) with the swish Matthew McConaughey version from the film, for example. One other comparison I had to draw was the size of the book. You hardly notice the two and a half hours of film go by, but the edition of the book I've got is nearly seven-hundred and fifty pages long. Quite frankly it looks a little daunting, especially when you consider how other authors have brought the most vibrant universes to life in a much smaller physical space (I want to mention David Markson, Alasdair Gray and Elfriede Jelinek as examples because they are much more experimental, with plot (or lack of it), form and voice respectively). Basically, being a pretentious PoMo guy, I was sceptical as to how I'd receive A Time to Kill.


The first nice surprise in the book was an 'Author's Note', which was honest and humble enough to hook me right away. Grisham explains a little bit about the process of writing the work, his hopes and dreams at the time and also a reflection on the finished article. He directly deals with my primary put-off - the length - saying, "It's a first novel, and at times it rambles, but I wouldn't change a word if given the chance." At reading this, all my pretentious pre-judgements melted away, and I settled down to give it a go.

I've heard Grisham's work (and others' in a similar vein) described as 'courtroom procedurals' which is pretty damn apt. There's no doubt that the themes are very engaging, the characters nicely rounded etc, but this plot-riche novel is chock-full of dry protocol. It's great for Grisham that he has such a wealth of knowledge on the American justice system (or should that be injustice system, ho-ho!), but I just can't help hearing my writer's voice shouting "CUT IT!"

One thing that struck me is how a whole chapter will be devoted to one strand of the narrative, then the final paragraph will reveal a shocking development elsewhere. The effect of this is startling, a sudden gear change that yanks your head back as your body speeds up through the action - certainly an interesting device that is present throughout and has a way of getting you to read on. I had thought of re-writing the book just including these final paragraphs (because they are the most 'to the point' bits of the book). I'm not sure why I thought that, perhaps just as a reaction to the heavy dependence on plot, but it would probably be quite lame without the rest of the chapter as a counterpoint.

I'm not saying everyone should be like Samuel Beckett, I'm not saying plot is evil and I'm certainly not saying A Time to Kill is a bad book. It was an entertaining enough yarn and I'm glad I read it - especially since now I can compare it to the film (incidentally, the way the film deals with expositional elements was a little better in my opinion, especially in the most important matter of Jake's 'final speech' and the jury's final hour). As I say, there are things I'd take out to streamline it, but Grisham himself admits that, as his first novel, he could've done better. You can't argue with how successful it is, though, first book or not.

Right, enough of my rambling. Should you give this book a go? That's what we're all here for right? You will like this book if family is important to you. You'll like it if racism, class and social order is a concern. You'll like it if you're sensitive to plight, not averse to harrowing events and, above all, want a happy-ish ending. It'll while away a pleasant few hours on holiday or, failing that, make a serviceable doorstop.

Peace out.

Great Fun

I just finished Jack Torrance's All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (edited by Phil Buehler), a book whose title sums up most of the content of its pages. It was great fun and an absolutely addictive read. There are plenty of SPOILERS here, so turn away now if you're planning on reading it and want to be surprised.

It has been described as a novel, which is true in a conceptual sense only. It's a novel in that it tells the story of fictional character Jack Torrance's struggle in writing the book he is working on in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 triumph The Shining. However, if you are looking at the book as written by Phil Beuhler, then it's not really a novel, it's more of a collection of conceptual poetry. It's up to the reader as to whether you want to believe it's Jack's book, or be a 'spoilsport' and see it as a pen-name.

It's a brilliant thing to look at in the context of postmodernism. It reminded me quite a lot of David Markson's Reader's Block, another work that is largely plotless and inevitably draws the reader to the process of writing (one of my 'favourite bits' about postmodernism when it's done well, a sublimation of the tackiness of the epistolic form of the long eighteenth century etc). Taking Matthew Belinkie's concern of "how difficult it must have been to write" into consideration, the overlapping text, spiralling text, circle-shaped text and others scream out a kind of frenetic energy that is very seductive. In The Shining (was it a film or a documentary?), Jack writes on a typewriter which makes the process a lot harder than modern word processing techniques. Imagining him twisting the paper round in the machine presents a strange (possibly haunting, perhaps chilling) image of the writer at work.

Also on the topic of typewriters, mistakes intentionally feature in the narrative (whether poetry or novel, there is narrative here). They form cadences and patterns, so much so that, for example, you expect "All work and no play makes Jack a dull bot" to follow "All work and no plaay makes Jack a dull bog." It's all very well treating the work as visual poetry (in fact, the overlapping text on some pages makes such a dense mess that reading it is genuinely impossible), but if you don't treat it as a novel and read it through 'properly' (i.e. word for word) you miss out. The effects are very subtle, and I for one don't pretend to be clever enough to understand them, but I have garnered meaning from them, and have enjoyed it. When 'bot' doesn't follow 'bog' on the end of the line, it has a similar effect to any work made of 'conventional' sentences (not sure how to explain what I mean! I'm tempted to say it'd be conventional if it was made of different sentences, but the whole point I'm making is that Jack's novel isn't just made up of the words 'all', 'work', 'and', 'no', 'play', 'makes', 'Jack', 'a', 'dull' and 'boy'. With typos, there's also 'mmakes', 'dullboy' and 'NO', amongst others). My capacity for explanation is insufficient, it really does need to be read to be believed.

It really is a delight. Very amusing indeed and highly entertaining. Again, coming back to the spiral page, the act of turning the book through 2070° is just so unusual. My mum, sat next to me, must've thought I'd gone mad. I think the next step would be, like the parody of The Shining on The Simpsons, to put the text in a physical space that is fixed (i.e. unable to be manually controlled), so that in the instance of the spiral format, one would have to explore it using 'bigger actions' like twirling round on the spot (seriously, imagine that much writing on the walls of a place, it'd be great. Even better than Lemn Sissay's 'Catching Numbers' which I enjoyed).

Anyways, I got the book from Blurb, check out their site if you want. I devoured it in no time and I think you'll love it if you have an interest in postmodernist literature or not. There are a number of other works based on the idea of Jack Torrance's writing, all you need to do is search 'all work and no play' on Amazon (the version I read, edited by Buehler, isn't available on Amazon by the way). I might well check them all out at some point, see what other 'editors' can do with Torrance's raw... insanity? Incidentally, some of the customer reviews of these things are hilarious, one person giving it one star because 'repeating the same sentence over and over doesn't make a book', the next person giving it five out of five because 'it's a work of unsurpassed literary genius'. Lol!

Peace out.