Patricia Highsmith & The Enduring Allure of the Shadow

Hello Gentle Reader,

It’s been almost thirty years since Patricia Highsmith died, yet her literary legacy cuts a haunting figure. There have been a variety of film adaptions of her work, from Alfred Hitchcock’s watered-down version of “Strangers on the Train,” to the first adaption of the “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” rebranded as “Purple Noon,” and then once again made more famous with the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which remains an audience favourite, despite not being the most accurate adaption of the novel. Then there was the film, “Carol,” an adaption of the classic lesbian novel, “The Price of Salt,” which was not only gorgeously shot and produced, but captured the rarely seen softer side of Highsmith. Of course there are the myriad of other adaptions: “Black Water,” “The Two Faces of January,” “The Glass Cell,” “The Cry of the Owl,” “The Sweet Sickness,” to name but a few. Then there is the plethora of theatrical and radio adaptions, which fail to be accounted for. These past two decades there have been two biographies of Patrica Highsmith, the first “Beautiful Shadow,” by Andrew Wilson was published in 2003; the second, “The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith,” by the late Joan Schenkar was published in 2009. In 2014 Joanna Murray-Smith’s play “Switzerland,” was produced and staged. “Switzerland,” imagines a fictional version of the well-known reclusive, misanthropic, bitter, and private Highsmith, who, secluded in her Swiss modernist bunker-like house, is visited by perhaps her most famous literary creation. In 2021, at long last the infamous Highsmith Journals were compiled and released for public consumption. Previously, they had only been quoted, analyzed, and presented via the biographies, where they took on a dangerous appeal. In hardcover form, the book is almost a thousand pages long and traces the years of 1941 – 1995. Now, Netflix has released a new adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s most famous literary invention: Tom Ripley, with their miniseries “Ripley.” All of which proves that Patricia Highsmith, be it her literary work, life and biography, journals, or character, continues to be the dry ice of inspiration, which we reach out to tantalizingly touch and recoil at not only the burn, but the lasting chill.

Patricia Highsmith remains an enduring and alluring figure for a variety of reasons. In discussing her literary output, critics agree that Highsmith has been (pun intended) criminally miscategorized as a crime writer or thriller writer; and while her works certainly revolve around criminal inclinations and devious acts; Highsmith was more concerned with the existential and psychological aspects of these mindsets. Crime novels, during Highsmith’s times were concerned with upholding the moral integrity and probity of good always overcomes the nefarious, dubious, and diabolical. They were cozy reads of an otherwise garden variety. Puzzles for readers to sniff out the killer lurking amongst the pages, while justice as a virtue would ultimately prevail. Patricia Highsmith in turn obliterated these concepts. First, Highsmith began to autopsy the placid normalcy of daily life, revealing layer by layer the festering filth and debauchery which lurked within everyone’s psyche. Thoughts people never spoke of. Be it threats of violence, or fantasies of murder, or compulsive obsessions. As “Strangers on the Train,” eloquently calculates that in desperation and debauchery, murder can change otherwise unhappy circumstances, be it the death of an unfaithful wife, or an oppressive father. Murder was no longer reduced to an unforgivable act of moral failing and falter, but evolved into a somewhat cooler arresting concept resembling a mundane transaction or basic commerce. When Agatha Christie caused an outrage and controversy with the twist ending of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” Highsmith, a prolific alcoholic, quite literally said: “hold my beer,” and continued to push that literary envelope. Yet, Highsmith’s treatment of crime and murder went beyond a thriller novel’s usual resume and output. When Graham Greene styled Highsmith “The Poet of Apprehension,” it was with good reason, as Patricia Highsmith, was more interested in spelunking and analyzing the character traits of her otherwise placidly normal people who had finally begun to entertain and entreat their darker thoughts, fantasies, obsessions and desires. This is perhaps why throughout her lifetime, Highsmith had a warmer reception in Europe for her work, where they viewed her as an existential modernist, whereas in the United States of America, she was viewed a crime writer who broke the conventions of the format.

Patrica Highsmith’s character and life remain a fascinating display of mercurial contrary paradoxes. Both biographies of Patricia Highsmith (“Beautiful Shadow,” and “The Talented Miss Highsmith,”) agree she was a complex and difficult woman, which is further supported by her journals. Throughout her life, Highsmith was militant in her defense of her private life. Publicly, Highsmith presented a cold and aloof personality. Highsmith never married, and openly remarked on her preference for bestial company to that of people, going so far as to proclaim her distaste for others by being quoted:

            “My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”   

Solitude was preferable. The late sage of Suffolk, friend and frequent visitor Ronald Blythe, remarked she often grew tired of his company. Fun fact, both Blythe and Highsmith were gay, though they kept this part of their lives to themselves, and yet still they still initiated and attempted sex. The nature of her sexual preference, was a bone of contention for Highsmith. In her youth she attempted psychoanalysis to rid herself of her infatuation of women. It obviously didn’t work, as Highsmith would go on to have a laundry list of lovers who she intensely and passionately adored and desired, and then abruptly abandoned and discarded. A few turned up in her books as victims, brutally murdered, proving that Highsmith had no sympathies for victims. Still, after a lifetime of curating and assembling a public persona that was obviously cold, bitter, and warningly misanthropic, it came as a shock for readers to learn that Highsmith was not reptilian, but warm blooded. She did, however, remain cruel in the end. In her later years, Patricia Highsmith had carved out a home within the sunless Swiss mountains, which physically emancipated her from public life, and facilitated her solitary lifestyle, which she viciously protected like a brown recluse spider. Overtime, Highsmith’s misanthropy graduated to equal opportunity offender, where she would unleash onslaughts and tirades, regardless of venue and revel in the indignation. She was known to spew venom vitriol with equal liberty and without concern. Otto Penzler (a former editor and publisher of Highsmith, before dropping her) described her as:

“She [Patricia Higsmith] was a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being…I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly.”

The late aged Patricia Highsmith is the most recognizable image of the author. Reclusive and unapologetically misanthropic, whose mean-spirited endeavors rivaled Olympic sporting events in both agility and testament to skill. What has since come about, is Highsmith was a mercurial and complex individual and writer, impossible to pin down and completely ungraspable. Forever shifting and ambiguous, with quicksilver changes, Highsmith defied concrete definitions and compartmentalization’s, and didn’t suffer those fool hearty enough to try to force her into any pre-conceived notion or expectation. To summarize Highsmith as being hardboiled and embittered, and venomously vicious when provoked or disturbed, overlooks her penchant for mordant humour, caustic wit, and unique insight into the consciousness of guilt, apprehension, and obsession. The truth is, Patricia Highsmith was amorphous. A shifting shroud of shade and shadow. One moment on the attack unleashing a torrent of racist and antisemitic remarks. The next, dreaming about some frivolous notion of domestic life with a woman she might love. At her best, however, she was hunched over her Olympia typewriter at her roll top desk, punching away at another novel or short story that delved into the abnormality and darkness of the human soul. Then the pendulum would swing back once again, whereby fueled by cigarettes and alcohol, Highsmith would once again recount, document, record, and scribble in her journals, be it an observation, idea, a list, fantasy, or any other notion. Highsmith loved and hated in equal vein and with the same intensity, often felt simultaneously as a singular experience.

While I haven’t finished the series, “Ripley,” just yet, I’ve enjoyed it thus far. It's a slow burn. Masterfully shot and stylish. The atmosphere is taut with apprehension and menace. The climatic confrontation between Ripley and Dickie is perfect. Ripley, never loses control, carrying out the act with meticulous cold precision. I have found it so disappointing in some reviews the fixation on the ambiguity of Highsmith’s famous American antihero, Tom Ripley’s sexual orientation. The infamous “clothes scene,” seems to have some viewers convinced that Tom Ripley is gay. For the record, Patricia Highsmith dismissed these theories long ago. Furthermore, the term ‘queer,’ when used in the show is not used in its new fashionably remediated format. It’s the old form carrying the tar and feather motivation such an insult was meant to invoke and incite, to purposefully denigrate an individual with no basis, into a category that defines them as somehow a corruption or mistake of nature, perverted and foul. Hearing the term used makes my fingers curl. The subject of Ripley’s sexuality is rather an unimaginative talking point in turn. Sex, much like con artistry, forgery or murder, for Ripley is merely an application or a tool, it is purely utilitarian. What is alluring and so enduring about the talented Tom Ripley, is his nebulous nature, completely chameleonic, shifting and adapting, measured and controlled. Ripley is the cuckoo bird or a changeling, the believable imposter. In the case of Dickie Greenleaf, there may have been adoration for the wayward prodigal son, as Ripley saw a cash cow which he could syphon and symbiotically leech off of. Its climatic conclusion was not the end for Ripley, it was only the beginning of an even more rewarding life. This is what is perhaps most compelling about Tom Ripley as a character, he's not outwardly deranged nor interiorly disturbed. Ripley (much like Highsmith) longed to be inducted and included among the elites. The two of them wanted a life of leisure and pleasure. The amicable good life. Ripley’s transformation is nothing short of Gatsby in its achievement.

Patricia Highsmith, never had the success in her native homeland of the United States. She was perennially shunned because she refused to subscribe and disseminate the virtues of justice and moral probity. Instead, Highsmith kept company with a more nefarious breed, plumbing the depths of the darker recess of the mind. Highsmith was the eclipse on the ideals of American justice, which she found not only hypocritical but puritanically misapplied. As a writer, Patricia Highsmith wrote as a dark mirror reflecting the hidden noctuary of the human condition, all the lusts, envies, greed, obsessions, strange desires, and all the devils clawing at the door. In existentialist fashion, she sought to bring readers face to face with these unacknowledged corners of our own consciousness. As a compelling character and individual, Patricia Highsmith strikes a profoundly complex figure, one who completely refuses to be captured in some neat portrait. Highsmith’s figure shifts unapologetically from the beautiful young woman of her youth, striking and gorgeous, to the gorgonized hardened gargoyle visage of her older years, which remains the most recognizable version to many readers. Her literary works remain compelling, dark glacier wellsprings which readers and writers often return to peer into the dark inky ice ridden depths, as if summon some new form of inspiration. Almost thirty years after her death, and Patricia Highsmith experiences an almost reoccurring sense of renewed appreciation, which was so lacking in her own lifetime. If anything, Patricia Highsmith has proven that there is an enduring allure to the shadow, the inscrutable and unknowable darkness of the human consciousnesses. As a writer, Highsmith was surveyor and spelunker of these amoral landscapes, exploring the depths of guilt, the thralls of obsessions, and conductor of the apprehension.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

The International Booker Prize Shortlist, 2024

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize Shortlist has just been released. Six novels have made the cut, with surprising omissions being trimmed away during the judges’ deliberations. This year’s shortlist consists of the following writers and novels:

            Jenny Erpenbeck – Germany – “Kairos,”
            Hwang Sok-young – (South) Korea – “Mater 2-10,”
            Jente Posthuma – The Netherlands – “What I’d Rather Not Think About,”
            Selva Almada – Argentina – “Not a River,”
            Ia Genberg – Sweden – “The Details,”
            Itamar Vieira Junio – Brazil – “Crooked Plow,”

It’s a twisted fate for previous winners and globally recognized writers. Including them on the shortlist, and the judges are accused of being predictable or playing it safe. Excluding them, however, raises the charge of superficial radicalism. In the case of Ismail Kadare, one could have expected to see him included on the shortlist because of his dignified decades long literary career; while in turn this reputation played against him via optics of the award. Personally, I was rather disappointed to see marvelous Italian writer, Domenico Starnone was omitted from the shortlist. While the longlisted novel (“Via Gemito,”) premise did not completely entice me, other novels such as “Trust,” “Ties,” and the forthcoming novel “The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan,” did pique my interest, as Domenico Starnone positions himself as a surveyor and portraits of the existential follies and interior dramas and private spaces of the individual. I look forward to reading Domenico Starnone in the near future.

The inclusion of Hwang Sok-young showcases the compelling interest of (South) Korean literature in translation, as this marks the third time in a row, a (South) Korean writer has been shortlisted for the prize. This is also a point of testament and pride for the (South) Korean governments increased sponsorship of literary translations abroad, whereby Korean language writers are finding a new readership as their work crosses linguistic thresholds. Hwang Sok-young’s novel “Mater 2-10,” is an epic in scope (and length, by far the largest novel on the shortlist), it traces a worker’s perspective of history through the 20^th century, as a laid off factory worker stages a sit-down strike atop a 16-story factory chimney, whereby he communicates with his ancestors, who witnessed colonialization, calamity, war, partition, and dictatorship through their lifetimes. “Mater 2-10,” cements and confirms that Hwang Sok-young is one of the most important novelists of his generation, with a keen understanding of historical context as pretext and foundation to the present.

Jenny Erpenbeck is a well known and beloved German writer, whose works are frequently translated into English. “Kairos,” recounts societal change and German reunification, while fixating on the personal dissolution of a relationship. Erpenbeck reminds readers as to why she is considered one of the most important contemporary German language writers as, “Kairos,” weaves the weight and macro forces of history into the personal life, recounting how memory and the subtilties of western and eastern cultures, shapes and individuals’ identity and their relationship to history, but also the bewildering state of moving between states and ideologies into a new state.

It was no surprise (and some relief) to see Jente Posthuma included on the shortlist with her novel “What I’d Rather Not Think About.” A compelling story regarding life, death, grief, from the unique perspective of twins, and the contrary nature of oppositional desires. Told through vignette’s, Jente Posthuma provides bitter insight into grief and loss, while recounting two lives intertwined and lived within a celestial orbit of one another, until diverting and crumbling in part to life’s disappointments and mishandlings, all the while sparking alive with humour. While the remaining three novels are equally noteworthy for tackling the complexities of history, both a national and personal level, in addition to their narrative techniques. Ia Genberg’s use of nonlinear narrative and falling into the fever dream of memory in her novel “The Details,” is a hallmark of a literary stylist at the height of her game.

This year’s shortlist is compelling with some surprise omissions. I think (personally) that the novels of most notoriety are: “Mater 2-10,” “Kairos,” “What I’d Rather Not Think About,” and “The Details.” Yet its up to the judges to make that decision on who will be crowned as this years International Booker Prize Winner. May they tackle the good work. The hard work. And the outright bitter work with gusto. I hope this years judges (chaired by the very well read Canadian writer and broadcaster, Eleanor Wachtel) have productive discussions, lively debates, and meaningful compromises in their future deliberations.

 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

Lynne Reid Banks, Dies Aged 94

Hello Gentle Reader,

Lynne Reid Banks has been immortalized by her monumental novel “The Indian in the Cupboard,” both for its fantastical storytelling; and now mired in the tar and drudgery of sensitivity criticism. The novel and its subsequent sequels have often been challenged by select parents’ groups, social activists, and any to all affiliated special interest groups. It regularly appears on challenged or censored children’s books, which incudes such titles as “Bridge to Terabithia,” “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” “The Chocolate War,” and a plethora of novels from Ronald Dahl archive. While the novels portrayal of Aboriginal peoples is as thin as varnish, its depiction can be a starting point for meaningful dialogues regarding representation and misrepresentation. Beyond her literary work for children, Lynne Reid Banks curated controversy with her debut novel, “The L-Shaped Room,” which dissected the prevalent social conservatism and mid-century modern moral subscriptions, by recounting the story of an unwed woman pregnant, whose been cast out of her comfortable middle class up bringing with the revelation she’s pregnant. What follows is a narrative of an otherwise fallen figure, who finds refuge in a dingy boarding house full of other such societal outsiders. The novel moves through the motions of pregnancy and the recount the bungled sexual encounter. Lynne Reid Banks career, however, compromised of a variety of other children’s books and literary novels. From “Tiger, Tiger,” a riveting tragic story of ancient Rome, to biographical fiction of the famous Brontë siblings, including the troubled Bramwell. Lynne Reid Banks remained a slippery and mercurial writer, capable of entertaining and writing for children about complex themes; while adjusting her pen for mature and adult readers, questioning prevalent societal notions and puritanical perspectives. Reid Banks life was also of adventure and gusto, complete with a sharpness of observation and tongue. Her otherwise signature forthrightness was guaranteed to start a spat or an argument, but was keen to admit her own follies and failures before anyone else could tack them to the wall. Lynne Reid Banks work will endure. I suspect her children’s work will always circulate, both on their own merits and the updraft of controversy and outrage of some parental group, while her literary output will be shielded under the shadow of “The L-Shaped Room.”

Rest in Peace, Lynne Reid Banks.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

John Barth, Dies Aged 92

John Barth Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

John Barth was one of the great American postmodernist writers of the 20^th Century, a towering figure and contemporary of many other playfully erudite and frustrating writers of the same generation, including Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, and Kurt Vonnegut; whose work confounded, perplexed, and perhaps even irritated, all the while being the polar opposites of John Updike, John Cheever, and Philip Roth. John Barth found the literary modes and methods of narration had become exhausted, predictable, were on the verge of antiquation and obsoletion. Perhaps serendipitously during the liberating 1960’s, John Barth and other writers, began to challenge preconceived notions of narrative conventions, plot and story; but also, the standards of langue and the purpose of fiction. In a metaphorical fashion similar to their predecessors (the modernists of the late 19^th and early 20^th century), this new ragtag team of loosely affiliated writers began to unfold and inject new literary methods in their work, challenging established literary theory and criticism. This unabashed promotional propagation of postmodern literary theory, is due in part to John Barth being an accomplished, respected, and beloved professor of literature, and sought to inspire students to move beyond the preconceived parameters of literature and instead create and explore new modes of narration. Barth’s first mature postmodernist novel “The Sot-Weed Factor,” takes inspiration from the pre-revolutionary poet and satirist Ebenezer Cooke and his titular poem, whereby Barth revisions and reimagines comical adventures and misadventures which become the farcical basis of the poem. By turns playful and complex, John Barth became recognized as a writer’s writer. John Barth’s follow up novel “Giles Goat-Boy,” would only confirm Barth as a writer of the highest postmodern sensibilities, again employing farce, metaphor, fable, analogy, and metafiction into a complex and twisted funhouse mirror of contortions. Subsequent publications “Lost in the Funhouse,” and “LETTERS,” became more intensely metafictional, proving that John Barth was not just a literary innovator, but an accomplished theorist and thinker. Once again, the discussion of the purposefulness of narrative and self-reflective narrative became areas of discussion. The experimentation and literary seriousness of John Barth’s work was never undermined by the use of parody, in fact satire and farce, became central components to Barth’s work, once again dispelling the myth that all literature of any merit or seriousness must be as grave and grim as T.S. Eliot. Sadly, John Barth died at the age of 92 on April 2^nd, 2024. Barth’s legacy as a accomplished academic, beloved teacher and mentor, and revolutionary postmodernist writer will endure.

Rest in Peace, John Barth.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary

Maryse Condé, Dies Aged 90

Hello Gentle Reader,

Renowned as a Grand Dame of French Literature and giant of French Caribbean Literature, Maryse Condé was always introduced on cyclonic winds rivaling the reverence of a hurricane. Yet in interviews and engagements, Maryse Condé never appears to be aloof or distantly Olympian in her engagement. Instead, Condé was warm, earthly, and generous with her intellect and insight. This only proved that the veneration that was attributed to Condé, was justly deserved. As a writer from Guadeloupe, Condé reckoned with colonial experiences and postcolonial perspectives of the small island nation. A narrative autopsy of colonialism is one of the essential components of Maryse Condé’s literary oeuvre, providing the entry point to further discussions regarding race, the female experience, and slavery, through a variety of locales and historical time periods. This is most famously seen in her novel “I, Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem,” a novel renowned for its subversive critique of racial and sexist themes from a historical perspective as a reflection of contemporary issues. “I, Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem,” showed Maryse Condé as a high literary operative, by being both academically critical and rigorous, but also engaging with readers on a level of enjoyment. “Segu,” published two years before “I, Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem,” provided evidence of Maryse Condé epicist capacities. The novel once again takes place within a historical setting, but subverts and reignites the narrative of (for lack of better terms,) ‘the African Diaspora,’ by usurping preconceived notions and presenting a new chronicle. “Segu,” recounts the story of an African royal family who must contend with a multitude of changing social principles and outside influences, such as burgeoning slave trade, the spread of Islam and Christianity, and white colonialization, all of which violently tear apart the social order and fabric of the kingdom. In a similar fashion to Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Maryse Condé has rewritten and reinvented the African narrative, dispelling the spurious notions that the continent was merely ‘ripe for the taking,’ or anarchistic and susceptible for chaos, requiring the modernizing guidance of third-party influences. “Windward Heights,” proved Maryse Condé was not just an epicist and visionary novelist, but a playful writer who embraced postmodern and pastiche literary techniques, by revising and reimagining Emily Brontë’s brooding grey and gothic novel: “Wuthering Heights,” onto the island of Guadeloupe with a new angle and slant. Maryse Condé was a formidable writer and warmly recognized around the world as one of the greatest contemporary French language writers of the time and a monolith of French Caribbean literature. Often whispered and speculated as a potential Nobel Laureate in Literature, Maryse Condé received the conciliatory prize in 2018, when she accepted the “New Academy Prize in Literature,” which sought to console the public at the postponement of the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year. Condé proved herself to be generous and magnanimous once again at receiving the award, thanking the expedited academy for the honour. Despite her advancing age and her failing eyesight, Maryse Condé continued to write (with assistance), her last novel “The Gospel According to the New World,” was originally published in 2021 and translated to English in 2023, whereby it was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.

Rest in Peace Maryse Condé.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XXVI –

I’m not spoilt for choice. I am Canadian, which means I live in a real-life monopoly, and as a matter of fact, I do not get to pass GO, or collect $200.00, or have any stake in Marvin Gardens.

The International Booker Prize Longlist, 2024

Hello Gentle Reader,

The International Booker Prize Shortlist for 2024 has released this year’s longlist of thirteen titles each competing for a coveted spot on the shortlist (which will be announced in April). Of this year’s longlist, South American writers dominate, with a quarter of the titles heralding from writers from Peru, Argentia, Brazil and Venezuela, which showcases a thriving literary scene thriving in the absence of the previous Latin Boom giants of old, and showcasing the talent of a new generation.

Without waiting further, the following are the thirteen shortlisted writers and their works (in no particular order):

Jenny Erpenbeck – Germany – “Kairos,”

Rodrigo Blanco Calderón – Venezuela – “Simpatía,”

Jente Posthuma – The Netherlands – “What I’d Rather Not Think About,”

Domenico Starnone – Italy – “The House on Via Gemito,”

Gabriela Wiener – Peru – “Undiscovered,”

Hwang Sok-yong – (South) Korea – “Mater 2-10,”

Selva Almada – Argentina – “Not a River,”

Andrey Kurkov – Ukraine – “The Silver Bone,”

Veronica Raimo – Italy – “Lost on Me,”

Itamar Vieira Junio – Brazil – “Crooked Plow,”

Ismail Kadare – Albania – “A Dictator Calls,”

Urszula Honek – Poland – “White Nights,”

Ia Genberg – Sweden – “The Details,”

Of the longlisted writers, Ismail Kadare is the only writer to have won the International Booker Prize in its previous format, when the prize was awarded biennially and sought to recognize an author’s entire literary output and career. if Kadare were to take the prize again with his novel “A Dictator Calls,” he will be the first writer to receive the prize first (in both formats). In addition to Ismail Kadare, the German writer, Jenny Erpenbeck is another internationally applauded and recognizable stalwart. “Kairos,” is described as a bleak portrait of two individuals locked with a state of intense desire and further cruelty amidst the collapsing and changing world as the GDR crumbles around them, proving that Jenny Erpenbeck is a master of capturing the balance between seismic historical shifts, and intimate human dramas.

This is not the first time Hwang Sok-yong has been nominated for the award either, having been longlisted for the prize in 2019 with the novel “At Dusk,” which recounts the memoirs of an otherwise successfully architectural director, reflect on his own participation in the erasure and rapid development of Korean society, away from its poverty and in the process the erasure of his own roots. Sok-yong traces contemporary Korean society through three generations of a railway family in “Mater 2-10,” – from the Japanese colonialization; through liberation, and its rapid development into the 21^st century, the hard scrabble life of ordinary Koreans and their drive to be free of oppression, as well as a strangely lyrical folktale rising to a crescendo depicting the sacrifices and indignities endured by the Korean populace. A showcase of what makes Hwang Sok-yong one of the most important (South) Korean writers of his generation.

Andrey Kurkov finds himself longlisted with his novel “The Silver Bone,” is a novel praised by critics and readers alike, as it bubbles with Kurkov’s sense of absurdism and unapologetic use of the uncanny, made all that more glorious for his historical detail, which explores the complexities of Eastern Europe, and despite being set in 1919 draws parallel with the current struggles of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jente Posthuma’s novel “What I’d Rather Not Think About,” is one of the novels to watch closely, a beautiful narrative of bitter insight that waltz between melancholy and humour, of the special relationship between twins, with emphasis on the ache of loss. The Brazilian writer Itamar Vieira Junio “Crooked Plow,” has been called one of the most important Brazilian novels of this century, a combination of both magical and social realism, recounts the lost voices of the black diaspora and their stories after the abolition of slavery in Brazil, revealing both the racial and economic inequalities of Brazil in powerful prose.

Veronica Raimo’s “Lost on Me,” is a firecracker coming of age novel, exploring the germination of a writer, whose inventions is her only way in which to emancipate herself from her family’s neurosis, and seek independence and life outside of the comforts and constraints of her own homelife. Witty, daring, and highly nostalgic capturing the palpations of Rome in the 80’s through to the early 21^st century. All the while, Ia Genberg’s novel “The Details,” is a fever dream of delirium, recounting the shards and details, those formulative relationships which define one’s portrait of their life.

It’s an interesting longlist which blends both defined and established international literary talents with emerging and new voices and narratives. It’ll be a unique shortlist in turn, at which point the judges have the unenviable task of reducing the titles to a concentrated form.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

For Further Reading:

The Guardian: Latin American fiction ‘booms’ again on International Booker prize longlist

– XXV –

Loss is a private affair, overcrowded with cooing good intentions and superficial sympathies.

Transparent Life: Regarding Mr. Bleaney

 Hello Gentle Reader,

Few poets carve through the niceties of window-dressing in a manner as eloquent and straightforward as Philip Larkin. The poem, “This Be The Verse,” opens with the line: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” Curiosity, be it from shock or agreeance, compels readers to continue through the poem, while Larkin in his usual no-nonsense and forthright manner continued to provide his assessment of the condition of parental failings, as not a singular event but one of routine fatalistic inheritance. Each generation adding its own signature complex, imprint and fuckery into the lives of unsuspecting children, as Larkin put it: “Man hands on misery to man.” Finally concluding with the most logical answer, which runs contrary to our economic systems and primal urge to reproduce, “Get out as early as you can,/And don’t have kids yourself.” Philip Larkin is that staunchly English postwar generation poet. One stripped of all delicate constitutions and sensibilities. A complete tonic and bitter pill to the romantics of old, channeling the palpable sense of loss and devastation left behind in a postwar world. A world whose foundations had forever shifted by unquantifiable destruction, desolation, and disregard for any previous precedence of possibility. Girded with an impenetrable sense of the ironic, and with a cynic’s edge, Larkin surveyed the hardboiled landscape and its people adrift within ruin, reduced further by rations, and with little in regards to prospects to look forward to. Philip Larkin rose to prominence with the others of his generation, who collectively were referred to as: “Angry young men,” a collective of young British writers from working class and middle-class backgrounds, who began publishing in the 1950’s. Included in their ranks was John Osborne, whose play, “Look Back in Anger,” is credited for sparking the movements prominence and denominating the term; Kingsley Amis, John Braine, and Alan Sillitoe; while Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, and Iris Murdoch are regarded as associates. Each of them balked and raddled their chains and struck their ire out against the morally bankrupt sociopolitical system of the era. Philip Larkin much like Kingsley Amis, proved to move beyond what would become a diminutive product of its time, much as all movements are. Larkin’s poetry retained both breadth and depth to maneuver beyond the immediate and ruminate on the eternal. Larkin retained a palpable quality to his work, to the point it veered on prosaic. Speakers and voices are provided further shape and form. Not concealed in image or metaphor. Where other poets plucked and planted from flowerbeds and fields of flowers, Larkin carved his out of concrete.

Often caricaturized and parodied as a toad, in a tongue and check homage to the poem: “Toads,” were Philip Larkin takes aim at the misery induced by the drudgery of work, masterfully captured in the second stanza:

            “Six days of the week it soils
            With its sickening poison –
            Just for paying a few bills!
            That’s out of proportion.” 

And while the poem rollicks to a crescendo of rebellion; Larkin deflates and brings the speaker back down to reality:

            “Ah, were I courageous enough
            To shout Stuff your pension!
            But I know, all to well, that’s the stuff
            That dreams are made on:”

As the practicalities of life in all their prudent measures, inevitably means suffrage in the hardscrabble monotony of work and no fortune. Whereby one lives within their means. Those always imperfect means. It brings to mind that quote from Herta Müller’s novel “The Appointment,”:

“From here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of a lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.”

Philip Larkin’s professional life as a librarian ran in parallel to his work as a poet, jazz critic, and casual novelist. There are competing theories of whether or not Larkin held his professional life in serious contempt. Private correspondence reveals a curmudgeonly tone regarding the nature of work. Larkin’s poetry provides further evidence to his dismissive opinion on the nature of work. This theory has of course won out, being cast and certified in bronzed truth: Larkin viewed the mundane as a chore to endure, not enjoy. Contrary, however, further records and transactional documents from his librarianship days, showcase Larkin in a completely different context, one who enjoyed the routines, structures, and orderliness of daily work. Neither poem or letter will provide any enlightenment into Larkin’s own personal views of his professional life and literary endeavours. Its easy to speculate that without the repetitive schedule of his professional obligations, Larkin’s authority on observing the quotidian components of a normal life and subsequent goals of elevating the everyday, would be significantly cheapened and disingenuous. This echoes the weary complaints of Horace Engdahl, who in an interview with La Croix in 2014, criticized the professionalization of writing. Now days, writers are manufactured and fabricated through graduate degrees and masters of fine arts programs, then entering into a symbiotic waltz with literary institutions, universities, and write. Gone, Engdahl laments, are writers engaged with the actual business of life, referencing T.S. Eliots career as a bank clerk.

The poem “Mr. Bleaney,” is one of elegiac observation of a life of mediocrity which amounts to nothing, but a bare room in a third-rate bordering house. The cost-of-living has its economic principles and aesthetics are ranked lower on the list or concern and approval. Mr. Bleaney’s world is contained within such meager borders. The inventory of the room leaves little to the imagination, all the while the current occupant of the room attempts to summon Mr. Bleaney, or at least come to understand his predecessor’s routine, inner thoughts, and life, which includes summer holidaying at Frinton-on-sea, and Christmases at his sisters in Stoke. It becomes apparent that the former resident, Mr. Bleaney’s life was one so lacking in any sense of life it had been reduced to seasonal routines and cycles. There is no significant occurrence or growth within the titular characters life. Nothing remarked as being exceptional or extraordinary or out of place. Mr. Bleaney’s attempts at gardening are observed at being equally futile, showcasing a lack of ability to instill the proper conditions for growth and development. Philip Larkin ends the poem with the final two stanzas:

            “But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
            Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
            Telling himself that this was home, and grinned
            And shivered, without shaking off the dread

            That how we live measures our own nature,
            And at his age having no more to show
            Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
            He warranted no better, I don’t know.”

The metrics to measure life are clearly applied to Mr. Bleaney, who lived a transparent life. A complete ghost, who became interred to the structures and routines of his orderly existence. A man neither in the way or out of the way, but merely apart of it. Adrift in current. Much like the speaker of “Toads,” who fantasies about telling his employer to ‘Shove,’ the pension, Mr. Bleaney is winningly reduced by circumstance and expectation. Those prudent provisions of life, all the accountancy of what one needs and the transactional exchange of service or labour to acquire those requirements. The current occupant questions the lack of material and accomplishments that decorate Mr. Bleaney’s life, and wonders in turn if this constitutes to a life at all? At no point in time is Mr. Bleaney remarked as to having any sense of enjoyment or distraction to partake in. He exists within a complete grey zone. deprived of colour and void of form. This is Philip Larkin at his most poignant, questioning the fates and meanings of one’s own life, and the entrapments of living a mediocre life. Mr. Bleaney cuts a haunting figure, who in Larkins vision removes the contemplation of the meaning of life away from the ostentatious heights of philosophical ponderings and theological edicts, and anchors it into the world through an otherwise shapeless and characterless everyday man, whose entire life slipped him by, and in its place was an ordered routine and distracted with the squatting toad work, and obliged in the lack of agency in his life, never confirming or denying his contentment in his solitary existence.

Philip Larkin’s poetry can become moored in the mire of cynical pessimism as the defining doctrine and only authority regarding the notion of realism. Regardless, Larkin’s poetry does retain a concern for the quotidian details, those otherwise palpable concerns of life, with all of its daily struggles, established ruttish routine, immovable social structure, and often soul crushing realities. Whether or not daily life (or life in general) was but an exercise in enduring task and chore, or a middlebrow drama in which each of us were presented with our own scenes and episodes within its never-ending soap operatic cycles; Larkin proved to be a poet who thought deeply and cared greatly for the concerns of an existential questioning regarding the meaning to life; human beings inherent freedom; the physical manifestation of time as both experience and governing factor; and the ever present reality of death; all the while lamenting on individuals fated inability to find it, while resigning themselves to a state of mediocrity. Reading the poem “Mr. Bleaney,” one particularly mackerel day in February was enough to solicit chills, looking out into a landscape of varying shades of grey and white with streaks of blue and clotted cream, accompanied by tuffs of exposed brown freeze-dried grass and wonder to what extent are you finding yourself neatly wrapped up within the confines of a mediocre existence, further marked with milestones to signify the holiday or Christmas dinners with obliging siblings. The case of Mr. Bleaney is Larkin’s elegy for the nameless, faceless, and shapeless individuals who go through life in a structured daze; all the while remaining an ominous forewarning to others to recognize their own life passing them by into a state of transparency, where the inconsequential, the mediocre, and limited expectancy becomes the death sentence of good enough and as good as it gets. 

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Hello Gentle Reader,

Translations of Ogawa Yōko’s work into English are slim when compared to other languages. What has been translated, however, has created a sustainable growing interest. Ogawa’s most recent translated novel “The Memory Police,” became an unintentional relevant metaphor for the pandemic. A period where the slogan “the new normal,” and “return to normal,” infiltrated everyday nomenclature, framing individuals’ linguistic relationship with the events unfolding around them. This of course was a period of public health measures, mandates, and restrictions; following a cycle of lock downs and easing of restrictions, then abrupt return to point zero. Throughout the pandemic there was a continued sense of the world being reduced, redacted, or amputated. Gradually the concept of normalcy and the individuals own attachment or relationship to it, was being hollowed out. Inch by inch.  Component by component. It was reduced to a point where the whole was no longer available, let alone recognizable. In “The Memory Police,” everyday events, objects, sensations, seasons—an entire catalogue of reference points—is wormed away by the titular memory police, who through metaphysical and physical Kafkaesque edicts, reduced the island world. Birds disappear. Roses become contraband. Perfume evaporates into nothing. The inhabitants of this world accept the gradual reduction of their lives with complacent subservience, all the while acknowledging their own self is being erased in the process. “The Memory Police,” was originally published thirty years ago, and framed as an allegorical depiction of an authoritarian society subjected to absurd physical redactions of their world. The novel examined the nature of memory, the art of reminiscence, the responsibility to remember, and the dangers of forgetting. Ogawa’s “The Memory Police,” is often juxtaposed against Orwell’s classic “1984,” because its narrative revolved around a totalitarian state attempting to subjugate an entire populace to its will, exercising complete control over their lives and reality.

The two narratives diverge significantly, however, in both literary intention and execution. Orwell’s novel explores unchecked political power and the inhumane measures in which authoritarian governments will take to retain it. The threat of independent thought and language in “1984,” is the foundation of the novels premise. Big Brother, dominates through a variety of soft practices, administrative procedures, and physical controls. For example, the Thought Police manufacture and maintain a cult of personality; while mass surveillance ensures abject compliance; the Ministry of Truth, disseminates propaganda, curates historical negation, and destroys any to all information that runs counter to the states positions or party lines; while the Ministry of Love takes more physical approach in compliance, through torturing, brainwashing, interrogating, and if necessary, exterminating dissidence. Orwell’s novel journeys through the dehumanizing hellscape, proposing the question what does it mean to live in this kind of society and what are the associated costs and consequences to resist it? Ogawa Yōko’s “The Memory Police,” never traced or examined the evils of authoritarian government regimes. The bureaucratic absurdity of the memory police existed in the periphery a component of the landscape and menacing shadow circling. Ogawa, fixated the narrative on a small collective of individuals, who preserve within the oppression of their circumstance. The atmosphere is intimate and suffocating. A world completely closed off.

Self-contained worlds, liminal spaces, private interiors, and intimate narratives, is one of the defining features of Ogawa’s work. In “The Memory Police,” the unnamed island remains severed and cut off from the rest of the world. In addition to this, the narrator conceals her editor R in a small room in her house, which is described as being suspended in space. These otherwise, normal landscapes or scenes, however, are always tilted off kilter. An atmosphere of dread or menace infiltrates the narratives. A vacant lot is littered with old appliances, where a boy suffocated to death. An abandoned post office is full of kiwis. A bakery’s confectionary kingdom is tainted by a shadow of a woman buying a birthday cake for her dead son. In Ogawa’s fiction the clean uniform surface of modern conformity society is a superficial façade, one in which pulled back reveals a grotesque and unacknowledged shadow. The grotesque does not translate into extreme violence or gore. A turner of subtle, Ogawa Yōko crafts and curates disquieting inflections tainting or revealing a shift in a character’s positioning and their interactions with the world that is slowly growing incomprehensible. Ogawa’s crystalline and placid prose is devoid of sensationalism and melodramatics, which maintains that Ogawa remains fixated on the characters perspective and their interaction with a world slowly sinking into the visceral.

Before the critically acclaimed publication of “The Memory Police,” in 2019, ten years prior a slim novel, “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” was published and warmly received by critics and readers alike. However, “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” found itself suffering from a poor marketing campaign. The late 2000’s was peak Murakami Mania with the publication of his long awaited: “1Q84,”, and publishers have (and remain) eager to capitalize on the next big Japanese literary export. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” was adored by the reading public and critics alike. Yet, the novel was marketed with a lighthearted air, playing up a narrative that could quite easily become entrapped in kitschy sentimentality and coated in sweetened saccharine sensibilities. As the novel was marketed as heartwarming and hallmark oriented, void of more serious literary concerns. Personally, I kept a safe distance from “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” viewing it suspicion and disinterest. Similarly, the short story collection “Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales,” was equally poorly marketed, attempting to pawn off the interconnected set of short stories as horror stories, which would disappoint any reader looking for gore, dismemberment, and splattering entertainment. “Revenge,” instead explored the unacknowledged viscera beneath the complacent surface of polite society. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is not a narrative that has been excessively sweetened. This is not a novel that could be deemed bubblegum for the mind. Just as in the “The Memory police,” Ogawa has designed a surrogate family unite for three characters, who held together by a common thread. In “The Memory Police,” it’s the subtle resistance to the authorities, by concealing R who’s capable of retaining and recalling memories, attachments, and sensations that have since been obliviated. Whereas in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” it’s the patterns and subtle intricate beauty of mathematics.   

“The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is narrated by the Housekeeper, a single mother whose past and personal life is blanched to the point of transparency. An only child raised by a single mother, her profession is more circumstance and vocation then passionate interest. A single mother herself, the birth of her son initially caused a fallout between mother and daughter. The Housekeeper reflects on her own mother’s perseverance at a casual job, became a venue and event manager. This work ethic and ability to transfigure difficult circumstances are key survival tactics for a single mother living in a society where single parenthood is considered a moral failing where mothers endure relentless discrimination resulting in poverty and social disenfranchisement. Regardless, the Housekeeper is renowned with her agency for being amicable, agreeable, and professional, which is why she is dispatched to a client with nine blue stars listed on their card—any star is a note of a difficult client with particular needs. The Housekeeper interviews with a woman, who is hiring a housekeeper for her brother-in-law a brilliant mathematician, who lives in the cottage in the garden. The catch? Due to an automobile accident, the Professors memory stops in 1975, and his short-term memory only lasts for eighty minutes:

“It’s as if he has a single, 80-minute videotape inside his head, and when he records anything new, he has to record over the existing memories. 

Aware of his lacking short-term memory, the Professor has clipped and pinned a variety of notes to his suit, one specifically reminds him of his lacking memory. Conventional pleasantries are quickly dismissed. The Professor immediately begins to ask questions regarding shoe size and telephone number, and showcases his mathematical aptitude for not only computing but also explaining the theories and equations in practice. When the Professor learns of that the Housekeeper has a son, he grows insistently concerned for the boy’s welfare, as he’s provided great autonomy and agency, left at home while his mother works. The Professor becomes insistent that the Housekeeper bring her son moving forward, which is in violation of the agencies code of conduct. The Professor becomes smitten with Housekeeper’s son calling him ‘Root,’ due to the flatness of his head. The three become a surrogate family, which is woven through with an appreciation of mathematics and a love of baseball. The remainder of the novel recounts the episodic encounters, challenges, and trials the family encounters throughout their daily lives and interactions. Math, however, is elevated not just as a quirk for the Professor to understand and retreat into, but becomes the focal point of how he interacts and engages with the world. His memory may fail him like clockwork, but numbers and equations, their logic is never changing, remaining a constant point of comfort and security.

It’s an extortionary feat for a writer to incorporate mathematics with such restrained, grace, and elegant beauty. The Professor finds comfort in the predictability and pattern recognition of mathematics. They are natural riddles which are solved, if only to heighten our understanding of the world. Mathematics and numbers are the foundations and the scaffolding of the universe and the natural world. Yet, their treatment by the professor is one akin to a musical or symphonic composition reaching a harmonic crescendo. Numbers are free from the follies and failures of people, and in their ordered realm they provide the Professor the means and the escape to understand the world.

“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”

As a teacher, the Professor is the kind of mathematics mentor everyone who has grown up to hate and avoid math (including myself) has needed. He is a complete 180 to the typical mathematics teacher who is more interested in sounding off equations and drilling quick computation. To this day a timed math drill is enough to make me panic. Yet, the Professor is not interested in the end result or the amount of time it takes one to linger over a problem, but instead to appreciate the process of contemplation, understanding the theorem in question, and how mathematics brings order to a universe which on its surface roils and boils in sustained chaos. He is far more delighted when the question produces another tangent and another question. Math becomes a sustained reaction of more questions and possible answers, but moving ceaselessly forward to heightened levels.  

There is good reason why readers fall in love with Ogawa Yōko’s “The Housekeeper and the Professor.” Ogawa ensnared a trio of mundane characters brought together by chance and circumstance, and allow their confined space to blossom into an intimate universe. A simple story of love and friendship transformed and defied the expectations that it was a novel dripping in sugared mawkish second-hand exaggerated emotion, when instead it moved beyond the immediate and into the infinite, contemplating the nature of memory but also the underappreciated poetry and aesthetic beauty of mathematics and numbers. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is a delicate and sophisticated novel, one which never lingers over the details but continually expands within the possibilities. Airy would be a marvelous way to describe this novel, not because of its length or to insinuate its lacking robust depth or character, but because the language and style is free of ostentatious posturing. Other writers who might incorporate mathematics as metaphor or point of interest in their work, would certainly ensure it was a method to cement and confirm their own cleverness, by shrouding it further in esoteric complexity. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” may not convert any to all suffers of mathematical anxiety to open a math textbook, but it does provide the context to math’s ability to provide harmony and order to a world, especially one in which an individual no longer finds themselves instep or in time with. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is a masterclass in understatement that assembles a surprisingly compelling narrative about three individuals adrift in the world, finding comfort and solace within the infinite symphonic composition of numbers and the interplay within each other.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary