Round-Up

Some short reviews of other books I've been reading recently...

A Hologram For The King - Dave Eggers

At one point, about ten years ago, I genuinely thought Dave Eggers was going to become one of the great living writers. Then he seemed to decide he wanted to be a philanthropist, and he did a pretty good job of that as well. Since 2009 though, he has suddenly become prolific again, publishing three new books, each one diminishing his legend slightly. A Hologram For The King charts the failure of the American Dream in latter-day capitalist society, but with such a sense of ennui that even the fingering scene seems a little laboured. There are flashes of his talent, but too often the targets seem obvious, and some of the writing is a little sloppy as well. The most interesting parts deal with the gaping void between the surface sheen of Saudi Arabia and the condition of the hidden workers responsible for making it happen. Elsewhere, the meditations on American industry, the space programme and the break-up of the nuclear family all seem a little hollow. There's not much in this that you couldn't get out of watching Sex and the City 2 with a Marxist friend. 

The Silence of Animals - John Gray

To quote Gussie Fink-Nottle, John Gray is ‘as foul a pessimist as ever bit a tiger’. His books attack notions of human progress, suggesting instead that our civilized veneer masks a nature that is ineradicably red in tooth and claw. In The Silence of Animals, he points to savage conditions experienced in Naples after the Allied occupation in 1943 to illustrate what happens when our layers of bureaucracy and government are stripped away. This follows on from ideas he has already expressed in Straw Dogs, amongst other writings, but later sections are more interesting, discussing Freud, the need for mythology, and the importance of silence.

Unfortunately, the writing feels a little fragmented at times – there are too many long quotes, and not enough of Gray’s own voice. Next to Black Mass, The Silence of Animals felt a little insubstantial, lacking a really strong central thesis, and although the sections on mythology were enlightening I wasn’t convinced that a stronger identification with woodland birds is a really satisfying method for dealing with the frustrations of the human condition.  

The Examined Life – Stephen Grosz

One of the early hits of 2013, The Examined Life uses a series of case studies from Grosz’s career as a psychiatrist to illustrate extreme forms of the problems we all face in life. Different sections will resonate with each reader – for me, the sections on childhood were very enlightening – but Grosz writes with clarity and a great sense of kindness throughout.

Joseph Anton – Salman Rushdie

I don’t know what possessed Mr Rushdie to write his memoir in the third person – other people to regularly adopt this device in public include Paolo Di Canio and Mr T – but it drove me to distraction throughout. There are some really interesting passages on Rushdie’s relationship with his police protection officers, the Major government and the newspaper columnists who supported his would-be murderers, and some passionate writing about the power of literature and the inspirations for The Satanic Verses, but Rushdie really isn’t a narrator you want to spend this much time with, and there is too much time spent settling scores with ex-wives and publishers. To amuse yourself whilst wading through this vast book, you might like to keep a list of world events which Rushdie compares to his own experience, except, you know, less important – the break-up of the Soviet Union being one memorable example.

Lightning Rods – Helen DeWitt

Published last year, Lightning Rods is an inventive and outrageous satire of the business world. Joe, a small-time salesman, comes up with an idea for preventing sexual harassment in the office – why not allow those driven, testosterone-fuelled high-achievers to channel their energies positively by offering them an outlet for free, anonymous sex in the workplace? The ‘lightning rods’ who provide this service will be indistinguishable from their colleagues, but will receive an increased salary as compensation. As the novel progresses, Dewitt’s satire broadens to take in everything from the Bible Belt to the makers of M&Ms, without losing any of its bite.

The Iraqi Christ – Hassim Blessin

A collection of short stories dealing with Iraq after Saddam’s downfall, The Iraqi Christ takes in the experience of occupation and exile. Blessin’s writing is vivid, moving from brutal realism to Kafkaesque surrealism. For a fuller discussion, see my review for The Literateur.

Sum – David Eagleman

In Sum, Eagleman imagines 40 possible variations on the afterlife. Some are optimistic, some less so. We may be created by a benign deity or by curious aliens, or maybe we are reincarnated through a process of infinite devolution. Eagleman, a neuroscientist, is not really interested in divinity but in how each possibility would reflect on and influence our earthly behaviour. The real thrill of Sum is in the exciting imaginative leaps made by the author, straying far beyond the rational boundaries set by most modern writers of fiction.

The Undiscovered Country – Carl Watkins

The Undiscovered Country examines British (or, mainly, English) attitudes to death from the thirteenth century to the present. Billed as ‘journeys among the dead’, the travel aspects of the book feel a bit perfunctory, but Watkins is good at spotting unusual examples of the themes he wants to explore, from druidic cremation-enthusiasts to medieval monks who doubled as connoisseurs of ghost stories. The later sections of the book feel a little familiar – the likes of Catherine Arnold have written well on Victorian attitudes to death in recent years – but Watkins’s discussion of the impact of the reformation, and the secret lives of puritans, is fascinating. He is also something of a sesquipedalian, throwing in the occasional ‘quinquenniel’ to keep the reader on their toes.