Reading Challenge: My Top Ten

So I promised that before the new year was up, you would have my top ten to fall asleep while reading. So, just in the nick of time (I'm making a habit of this), here it is. Since it's been such a long time coming, I won't beat about the bush but will kick off the big countdown with number 10...

10) The Heart of the Matter – Grahame Greene

(I apologise for that link; it seems QBD don't sell any physical copies of the book)

Graham Greene! Yes, Google, there’s more Graham Greene on my blog. Plenty of Graham Greene to go around.

This was my first taste of Graham Greene and in some ways it’s possible that I think of this one more fondly than the Power and the Glory for that reason. I also came to this book not knowing how highly rated it was, or that it was on TIME’s list; I just picked it up in a second-hand bookshop thinking “Hmmm… Graham Greene… there’s someone I’ve never read.”

While it took me a little while to get into The Heart of the Matter, there also wasn’t a point where it suddenly became engaging. It was more like: I started it, it seemed like an English colonial story, akin to The English Patient perhaps, and before I knew it the story was nearly over and I’d been engrossed the whole time.

What I wanted to say about Greene in my earlier post, but felt it applied better to this novel, is that he cuts against a lot of my more esteemed favourite authors, such as Rushdie, Kundera, etc. in that he saves little room for reflection and introspection. What he represents to me is a return, or maybe just a perpetuation, of old-fashioned storytelling, and proves himself more than adept at weaving a captivating story without the need to stop frequently and look around.

However, in telling the story of the honest colonial policeman Scully and the dilemma that confronts him when he falls in love with a tragic widow in the absence of his equally tragic wife, Greene manages to dovetail it with his customary reflection on Catholicism and the wrestling with guilt and conscience.

It does run counter to what I usually enjoy in stories, but the deftness with which it engaged me throughout opened my eyes a bit to how much great storytelling I could be missing. I can’t recommend this book enough, particularly if you’re in the mood for a damn good story told damn well.

9) Appointment in Samarra – John O’Hara

When I officially started my challenge, and assigned each book a number based on my eagerness to read it, this one came up on top, largely because I love the Somerset Maugham short story from which it takes its title.

I think I mentioned this book very early on in my write-ups, or at least when I wrote up The Great Gatsby. Basically I describe this book as really rather similar to The Great Gatsby, only not shit. It’s certainly set in a similar milieu; wealthy socialites in or near the 20s, country clubs, balls, etc.

Where this sets itself apart though is, well firstly, that it’s not hollow and pointless, but because it grapples with themes far more interesting, and a lead character who is also far more interesting and psychologically well drawn. It's a compelling fatalistic fable depicting a man’s life spinning faster and faster out of his control. This is where the Somerset Maugham allusion in the title comes in: the message goes that no matter what you strive to do to escape, or rectify the situation, once your number has come up, it’s up.

The book itself is quite tragic, and gets quite frustrating and upsetting at times too: the young mover and shaker Julian English, in an instant of drunken madness, throws a drink in the face of an influential denizen, bruising his eye with an ice cube. Hoping to shrug it off as just the moment of madness it was, English stumbles from one attempt at reviving his social climbing hopes to the next, as the ice cube in the glass becomes the catalyst for a series of ostracising exercises from which he can’t extricate himself.

O’Hara writes with quite a chilling detachment, giving the bourgeois world he is painting a clinical examination, and in particular how finely woven are the threads of propriety and kinship around such a culture.

8) Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Well, I mentioned in my last post that Nineteen Eighty Four was the second-last book that has a huge long gap between my reading it and my doing this challenge. This is the last.

In fact, it’s quite significant that it has been so long since I read this book, because I’m really not sure it has enough intrinsic quality to rank at number 8 on my list, but it holds a special place in my heart because of the circumstances under which I read it.

Basically, in late-ish high school, I turned from being a mildly rebellious teen, who didn’t really misbehave or go off the rails but rather just did poorly in class in the hope that someone might suffer from it apart from himself, to a slightly more disciplined academically-minded teen, who sought to improve his mind through extra-curricular reading in areas that might challenge his ways of thinking. In other words, there was a point when I decided I was going to become a pretentious twat, and for some reason Catch-22 was the first book I chose to read to start improving my mind.

Of course, that wasn’t such a silly choice, because the book is a finely-tuned piece of anti-war satire, written with a keen, all-seeing eye that at some turns seems to be missing the bigger picture but will happily turn and slam that bigger picture right down your throat. At times hilarious, at other times slightly irritating, it is most definitely a book worth reading. I don't remember details well enough to give it a point-by-point critique here, but I found it very enjoyable and provocative at the time.

So to summarise, Catch-22 is certainly a fine book, but its importance to me is far more significant than the simple fact that it is a fine book. 

7) Rabbit, Run – John Updike

I have mixed feelings about John Updike. Going into this challenge, where the only representative from his very comprehensive oeuvre is this hackneyed-sounding cliché of every critic’s book list, I had read only one other of his works; the 2006 effort Terrorist, and I found it dealt very dryly and uninterestingly with very trenchant and difficult subject matter.

Rabbit, Run follows a tired and fairly uninspired premise: a former high school sports hero, after an encounter with some school-age kids on his way home to pregnant wife and young son, enters a sudden and severe mid-life crisis and decides to uproot and steal away from the rut he finds himself in. And for the most part, reading it, I felt the premise was indeed tired and Updike’s treatment was similarly dry to his treatment of Terrorist.

But (and there is a BIG but) while four-fifths of the book seem tired/dry, they aren’t  poorly written, and they are absolutely necessary in setting up the penultimate chapter which is undeniably, to me, the most harrowing and earth-shattering chapter of literature I’ve ever read in my life.

I’m going to keep these reviews relatively spoiler-free, but suffice to say that it involves a character in the book getting mind-bendingly drunk and the resultant dire catastrophe. The chapter is harrowing not simply because of what happens, but because Updike’s blow-by-blow rendition of an alcoholic slipping with alarming acceleration into a stupor at the most troublesome moment is so painfully, shockingly vivid, and rings so many alarm bells for anyone who, like me, has found themselves in a similar downward drunken spiral in their life. Reading this actually made me appreciate how lucky I’ve been to have been in the company of responsible, relatively-sober people every time I’ve been in this situation and that nothing so terrible has ever befallen me or those around me.

The final chapter that follows it, too, is wildly, anarchically ambivalent, too, and puts a callous question mark at the end of a very chaotic sentence. I remember reading the end of this book in bed one night, and I was up for another hour after it just pondering it in my mind. If truth be told, it haunts me still. 

I would happily read three times over the rest of Updike’s sometimes plodding narrative, if a finale as explosively dramatic as this were waiting every time.

6) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

I offer now exhibit B.

Now this was a surprise. If you’d told me before going into this challenge that one of my absolute favourite books would be the story of a group of schoolgirls growing up in Edinburgh in the 1930s, I probably would have given you a good hard slap and called the mental hospital you’d escaped from, and probably put a coat on you and wondered why you were wandering around Kings Cross naked at that time of night, giving me predictions on my reading challenge.

I obtained this book for the pure and simple reason that my local library had it on the shelves, and I read it for the pure and simple reason that it was remarkably short.

But what Muriel Spark manages to do with the hundred or so pages is so pointedly witty, sharp and thought-provoking that I was an instant fan. I feel like there’s quite probably some influence from this book on Margaret Atwood’s writing, because a lot of her works follow a similar structure: at the heart of this novel is a mystery, namely on what grounds was Miss Brodie ‘betrayed’ to the school authorities, and which of the ‘Brodie set’ as they come to be known was it who betrayed her. Through its leaping backwards and forwards in time, the unravelling of the mystery forms the trail of the story.

There isn’t a wasted sentence in this book. Everything is on purpose, and so the short tale rewards those who pay attention. The ambiguity of Miss Brodie’s character as she explores her love of education, the joy of being ‘in her prime’ and couples this with her admiration for fascist dictators is marvellously drawn by the narrator, Sandy, whose own character is also one of great interest.

While this isn’t much of an introspective on the female sphere, it is an admirable cross-section of female life – with an eye to coming-of-age and the enjoyment of life as one transitions through the stages – into ‘ones prime’ and then out again – in pre-Women’s lib times, and is just a truly entertaining read.

5) The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

An old favourite, this, and an inevitability near the top of my list.

Franzen’s desperately funny and poignant portrayal of a family of Midwestern misfits who are trying to reunite for one last Christmas is more a story about the lengths we go to to try and make something praiseworthy out of ourselves.

The aged and ageing parents, Enid and Alfred, and their three kids Gary, Denise and Chip, are all in turn put through their paces by Franzen’s hacksaw of pathos, and while at times it’s very sitcom-like, the wit is undeniable and he manages in his easy-to-read style to really cut to the core of the everyday struggle in our lives.

The truth at the heart of this book was most keenly felt when I found myself relating most to the character of Gary, the priggish and self-righteous elder son, in spite of the fact that I recoiled from his pathetic and feeble male ego trips. His ‘fetishisation’ of the noble is something that I uncomfortably have to recognise in myself.

But every character's story is drawn out with incredible colour, and Franzen is admirable in his adoption of heteroglossia, in painting each story with each character's own unique brush. This is a mosaic of heartfelt and vivid character portraits that also just happens to be one of the most enjoyable books in the world.

4) Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

So I mentioned a while back that there were still a handful of ‘plight of black people in society today’ stories. This was by far and away the best of the lot.

Ellison’s story of a young man from the south who, after being suspended from his promising college, wanders from trial to trial trying to make something of himself in New York, is a scintillating portrait of the dividing line in society.

His pointedly-unnamed narrator is at times bullied like a slave, at most other times exploited by more powerful figures who want to use him to further their own causes, and at other times is the unbeknownst catalyst in fates far beyond his reckoning. At the start of the book we are introduced to the term ‘invisible man’, as our narrator explores the fact that while most people ignore him, those that see him do so without really seeing.

While the rest of the book explains how he came to this realisation, the writing moves from strength to strength as the recognition dawns on him, and he begins to see it as an advantage in some ways.

It’s a fascinating look at racial inequality, and it really made me ponder why ‘racism’ per se has become so easily vilified as a four-letter word, when it’s just as ignorant to pretend or act that inherent differences and societal unbalance don’t exist.

Of all the books on this list, too, this is the one I’m most likely to revisit in the future. I powered through my first reading because it was so interesting, but it will most definitely provide richer rewards from a more careful read through.

3) Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

So I deliberately left my write-up of The Crying of Lot 49 short, because what I wanted to say about Pynchon in particular is more relevant to this book, and it would have completely stolen the thunder otherwise.

The way I feel when I read Pynchon is that I’ve been seated at a dinner party with the most urbane, witty and erudite companion, who spends the entire two hours I’m in his company regaling me with the most fascinating, unbelievably intricate and entertaining stories, then at the close of the evening I’m never to see him again.

Gravity’s Rainbow is undoubtedly in my mind the greatest and most complete example of that feeling. The story takes us comprehensively around the world, into vast armies, seedy underbellies and even seedier experimental research facilities, with all the characters of high and low character searching for the elusive supersonic rocket that they hope to obtain to achieve various unpleasant ends.

The funny thing is, though, that there’s very little that’s universal, didactic or even, dare I say it, relatable, in any of Pynchon’s flights of fancy. Difficult as his prose is, the story is by and large pure escapism, but it’s pure escapism of the highest and most unbelievably intelligent quality. If ever there was a novel that embodied the non-stop-thrill vibe of a Christopher Nolan blockbuster without resorting to prosaic reformulations of action movie clichés, this is it.

But more than just being entertaining, Pynchon simply operates in, and takes us to, a different universe, one that bears a disturbing and uncanny resemblance to our own, yet still remaining detached and elusive.

2) Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

So remember back in the heady days of my 41-50 vile hatefest post, I mentioned in the course of discussing Cormac McCarthy that The Road was one of two books that have ever made me cry? You’re looking here at book number two.

The subject matter alone should be enough in itself to make grown men cry, being a heartbreaking fable about love, friendship, lost innocence, and the regret of missed opportunities, but what makes Never Let Me Go push the boundaries of pathos was through Ishiguro’s transcendentally ethereal writing, which makes this is as ridiculously beautiful as novels will ever get.

So deft and delicate is Ishiguro’s prose that it managed to fool me at every turn, in particular with the dystopian twist to the story. I was swept along by this seemingly normal portrayal of children growing up at boarding school, so when it finally becomes transparent that everything is not quite as it seems, it came as a rude awakening. It suddenly occurred to me that there had never been any mention of the origins of the world being described, or time previous to the setting, and I realised Ishiguro had been essentially playing a wicked game with me all along.

I apologise for perpetuating the vague descriptions that always go hand in hand with write-ups of this book (or the recent film adaptation) but to describe the twist is to ruin the book’s immense power.

Without pushing the boundaries of narrative (structurally it’s a very simple story), this book is as close to sublime as you can get. It was compelling, but at the same time it just brought a big warm feeling out of me and left me pondering the cunning majesty of the story and the celestial beauty of Ishiguro's writing.

The only book that could top it is one that managed to encapsulate the whole human experience together with pushing the boundaries of narrative possibilities. Speaking of which… (do I have a drum roll? No? Well, here’s a gif of Barack Obama laughing and nodding to increase the suspense instead)

http://i.imgur.com/5NKvN.gif

1) Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

Alright, enough with the suspense. If you’ve spent two minutes conversing with me on any subject in the past two years, you should have known this book was coming. In short I’ve been the most shameless pimp, and it’s finally crunch time now for me to justify it.

Alas, poor David Foster Wallace. It is true that this book is all wrapped up in the tragic mythology and aura surrounding its author, his long battle with depression and his ultimate giving up of the fight in 2008, but having also read what exists of his unfinished memoir The Pale King I can surmise that this is part of how he writes. Everything comes out of personal experience, but all painted with huge flourishes of wild imagination and a sinister, sardonic eye to the darker side of humanity.

Infinite Jest takes place largely in two settings: a junior tennis academy and a nearby halfway house for recovering drug addicts. Yet to say that it is a novel about tennis and drugs is like saying that Plato’s Republic is a book about Greek dudes having a chat.

The novel covers pretty much every topic relevant to twenty-first century Americana, but in particular its themes are about the pursuit of happiness and the unobtainable ideal of unassailable joy (infinite jest, as it were).

The book is full of characters pushing towards that ideal, through the hunger for fame and recognition, the obsessive perfection of their art, or through the abuse of artificial substances to escape from this flawed and fractured universe. The pursuit is typified in the book by the presence of a singular cassette recording of a film called Infinite Jest, whose mysterious subject matter so enthralls any viewer that they will stare endlessly at the screen, neglecting such basic functions as eating, sleeping and, eventually, breathing.

In some ways the novel – or at least that one of its many, many strands – bears a striking resemblance to the plot of Gravity’s Rainbow, as the one copy of the cassette is pursued by various people out of idle curiosity or a nefarious desire to militarise the object’s use. But Infinite Jest to my mind proves that great art builds on whatever came before it; it takes the wild, fantastical and disturbing notes of Pynchon and transplants it into a more recognisable milieu with characters who suffer from all the same flaws and neuroses as we all do.

I’d have a hard time denying that Infinite Jest is a difficult book to get through, not just because of Wallace’s insane use of footnotes and footnotes-within-footnotes, but because it exists firmly in a post-structuralist model where there no longer exist any rules, and he jumps around in time mercilessly, with no key protagonist or clear story arc to grab onto.

That didn’t matter at all to me though, and when I finally put the book down after two months’ spent reading it, I felt a weary kind of depression that I’ve never experienced before or since at the conclusion of any sort of writing.

This is the charming, erudite and wildly intelligent dinner table companion who sticks with you forever, always reminding you of the absurdities of life and always ready with a quick joke to make you smile.

Have a happy new year, y'all.