The Literature of Dystopia: Gary Shteyngart in Literary Review

Gary Shteyngart has written a new novel, Super Sad True Love Story. I've reviewed it in the September issue of Literary Review – unavailable online, so go and buy the print version. The novel is about the state of the world. Read the issue to find out whether it is a valuable contribution to dystopic literature: or does Aldous Huxley still rule supreme. Bruce Chatwin's letters is the cover piece of the issue. It's also nice to see my old friend Patrick Hennessey, whose excellent book about being a soldier, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, I have been seeing being read on almost every tube train in London, on the same contents page as me - he's reviewing Matterhorn. Visit Literary Review HERE

Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris: Review

Yesterday was a day of rain sliding out of the sky in sheets, of cloudy hot skies, of cocktails and mussels and balconies. I went to see Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square. As I queued to buy a packet of Cheese and Chive crisps, a rather small but very polite young man walked past me and apologised for getting in my way. What a nice young man! I thought. They do still teach manners! The nice young man turned out, of course, to be Daniel Radcliffe, presumably on a night off from wizardry and Harry Potter.

We (not me and Daniel, of course) had seats right up in the rafters, which made it feel as if we were watching a puppet show. The first half took place in a stereotypical American household. The wife, in a New Look dress and pinafore, demonstrating intelligence but totally desperate, watched her husband loaf around in his pyjamas, mourning the death of his son. Things progress: it appears that a black family is moving into their house, and the neighbours are not happy. I felt that this act had too much in it: racism, the suggestion of hidden tragedy; it felt bitty, whilst the characters did not live and (even the wife) seemed to be merely mouthpieces - puppets, even. One touch of originality was the racist resident's association leader's deaf wife; but even she seemed played for laughs rather than any deeper meaning. Everything was contrived: a trunk was buried (no doubt for future significance), a colander served as an awkward sign of condescension. (Incidentally, I laid a bet with my companion: every 'issue' had been touched upon - gender, disability, racism - so there was a good chance the second half would have a gay character in it.)

But the second half was like a magnesium flare in the darkness. The curtains opened on the same set: but the house was now decayed. Now the neighbourhood was almost totally black, and a middle class white couple was moving in. The same actors appeared in new guises: the once silent maid now reincarnated as a sassy black woman; the suburban mother as a loudspoken lawyer. Martin Freeman (most famous perhaps, at the moment, for putting a stapler in a jelly, but here showing his real skill) went from playing the slimy, pedantic, wordy residents' association leader, to an articulate, bewildered husband. Norris played cleverly with our notions of offence: as a white middle class person, I go through life wondering why most people are so offended by things all the time; a joke the black woman says (after much goading by the others) caused me (and the rest of the audience) to have a sharp intake of breath - and then to think how absurd it was to be offended at all.

The play neatly showed the links between this new society and the one that had gone before. It ended with everybody storming off: and then had a quiet, poignant coda, which showed how fragile we all are anyway. (Oh, and I won the bet by the way - the male lawyer turned out to be gay.)

Obits: Elizabeth Jenkins and Michael Burn

There were two marvellous obituaries in the Daily Telegraph today, of the novelist and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins, and the writer Michael Burn. Both led lives of incredible interest and excitement which leave my humdrum metropolitan existence in the shade. Obits can often be the most interesting part of a newspaper: I find myself cutting them out and keeping them aside. I suppose my favourite recently was of the film producer Hercules Bellville (pictured), a man remembered for his dedication to his profession and his gift for friendship. Who would not want to be remembered for such things? What comes out of these lives is the intensity and uprightness with which they lived. Whatever one does, we can only hope to do the same.

D B C Pierre and J K Huysmans: Do Initials Make You A Hedonist?

D B C Pierre's new, manic, Huysmanic novel of decadence, Lights Out in Wonderland, is a catalogue of horrors and hedonism. I've reviewed it in the Daily Telegraph: click HERE to see it.

Against Nature (Penguin Classics) by J K Huysmans was a book I read when I was probably too young to understand it. I was thirteen, in my last year at prep school, and I'd just read The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics). In it the hero is mightily affected by a nameless book; after some careful and dogged research, I unearthed it. I remember being dizzied by it; I haven't read it since, but some scenes from it stay with me even now: an English pub full of red-faced porcine boozers; the famous jewelled tortoise; the black supper. It was all good training, of course, for a writer of fantasy literature...

So is it any coincidence that D B C Pierre and J K Huysmans both use initials? Or that Huysmans shares the very same initials as J K Rowling? Joris Karl morphs very easily into Joanne Kathleen... Perhaps the latter is an incarnation of the high priest of decadence: or maybe J K R is an immortal, Huysmans expanded through the centuries.

Think about it: is there anything more hedonistic or truly expressive of decadence than a wizard? Pierre, in his novel, refers to hedonists as 'wizards'. I think something is afoot here. Perhaps Rowling's next novel will see Potter tire of wizarding life and retreat into a world of cloistered walls, jewels, magic beasts and perfumes. Or hang on, that's what he's doing anyway... Stand forth, J K, and reveal yourself! The world awaits.

Farundell by L R Fredericks: review

Farundell by L R Fredericks is a debut novel which pulls no punches. I've reviewed it for the Financial Times: click HERE for the link.

Hesiod's Calendar by Robert Saxton: review

One of the nicer things about being in the literary world is that one comes across, serendipitously, books that might otherwise escape one's notice.In the books cupboard the other day I found, published by Carcanet Press, Robert Saxton's version of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days.

It is a brilliantly clear sonnet sequence, full of wisdom and humour. The sonnet has the formality and grandeur of dactylic hexameter, whilst allowing for an extra layer of charm. We have the whole ancient world spread out before us in musical language: 'the fragrant girl who stays / by her mother's side indoors, innocent of the ways / of Aphrodite - more bud than flower still ... Far away, in a jumpled heap / of legs, the octopus in its foreign / realm takes a bite of one foot so as not to starve.' Here is the familiar and the alien together, as Hesiod is at once someone we know ("Have good regard for measure in all you do") and someone whose mores we can wince at: ('choose a wife who's four years past puberty / and a virgin.') Simple lines evoke much: 'Elsewhere dreaming of a sheltering cave / or thicket, forest creatures on the run / panicked by snow, are desperate for sanctuary.'

Saxton's version (he has no Greek) is, to borrow a phrase from his own works, a yardstick to the stars of Greek myth - here the theogony develops at full tilt, from Chaos: 'no dream, no fear, no rain, / only an idiot swirl in a cosmic brew', through the birth of the Olympians and finally 'the stone that Cronus swallowed, now at Delphi.' It is accesible and intelligent, investing what can be a knotty, even dreary work with new vitality.

(Picture: Hesiod and the Muse by Gustave Moreau)

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon: review

...and also a link to my review in the Financial Times of Annabel Lyon's debut novel about Alexander the Great, The Golden Mean, told through the eyes of Aristotle.

CLICK HERE