Love For Books

A horrifying but essential read: The Shock Doctrine

The Canadian journalist Naomi Klein first came to my attention when I was given a copy of No Logo by my dad. Her exposure of the dark side of our capitalist, acquisitive society was relentless and left me feeling outraged.

I was expecting the same kind of reaction to The Shock Doctrine. It made for compelling reading, although I know of more than one person who has been unable to read to the end, simply because it is too horrifying.

Klein starts by talking about the shock treatment dished out to vulnerable people in the US; the idea that personality can be wiped clean, only to be rebuilt by those who know best. She then shows how these ideas were translated into economic policy that has been destroying lives ever since.

In the current economic climate, this is an essential, if depressing, read.

Are short stories worth the effort?

The American novelist Cormack McCarthy famously said that writing short stories didn’t interest him because ‘anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing’.

This seems a rather extreme approach to writing, although you can’t argue with the quality of the work that McCarthy has produced himself.

It also seems to suggest that short stories belong to a genre that is more light-weight and less demanding for an author. Surely, however, the need for economy of language and effective plotting and structure places more demands on a writer, not fewer?

Reviewers recognised: The Hatchett Job Award is born

There are probably too many literary awards around for anyone to want to introduce another, so attention has been turned to those who review the books that may or may not win the awards.

Baptised The Hatchett Job Award, this year’s winner (the first in the history of the award) has gone to Adam Mars-Jones for his review of American author Michael Cunningham.

According to the website Omnivore that had the bright idea of launching the competition, the aim of the prize is to reward the “writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review” of the past year “not to punish bad writing, but to reward good and brave and funny and learned reviewing”.

The Shadow of the wind creates an atmospheric portrait of Barcelona

If you are looking for a bit of escapism in your reading material at this time of year, you could do worse than The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The author conjures up a very atmospheric picture of Barcelona, both pre and post war, with some vivid and beguiling characterisation.

The plot is sufficiently intriguing to draw you in, although some of the devices used to reveal elements of the story can occasionally feel a little clunky, included more for the convenience of the author than anything else.

While the revelatory letters and suchlike can feel clumsy and disappointing, ultimately this is an enjoyable story about loss, love, community and personal triumph in a world full of disappointment and failure.

Delve a little deeper into the lesser known works of Steinbeck

John Steinbeck is one of America’s best-loved writers and books like The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men have cemented his place in the history books. However, some little-known works are also incredibly rewarding.

Among those works is a short novel called Tortilla Flat. This wonderful story takes place in the familiar Steinbeck setting of California. The ups and downs and moral twists and turns of a group of friends in a downtrodden part of Monterey provides the plot, which comes in the form of a number of short vignettes that are incredibly easy to digest and yet which feel full of meaning.

If your relationship with Steinbeck only stretches as far as the major works, it is definitely worth delving a little deeper.

How Greene balances escapism with intense humanity

A lot of avid readers would count escapism, imagination and depth among the most important factors that make a book a great read. These are factors that I’ve always found Graham Greene to deliver in plentiful supply.

Greene is a master at weaving imaginative stories with a dose of realistic depth thanks to his intensely human characters. The humanity of Greene’s characters in works such as The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American and Brighton Rock (to name a few famous examples) is perhaps their real strength, although the thrilling plots they must negotiate are lapped up by his massive readership.

Few authors are able to make thrillers feel as profound as Greene makes them feel. His studies of relationships and miscommunication lend his works a masterful sense of tragedy and realism whilst retaining much of the romance expected of novels read for pure escapism.

Bataille: A little adventure goes a long way

A lot of people are put off the prospect of reading Georges Bataille because they have heard stories about the disturbing, sexually graphic and fetishistic nature of his work. However, my advice would be that reading is much more rewarding if you show a little adventure.

Bataille’s Story of Eye can be described using all the terms used above, but that doesn’t make reading it an upsetting experience. In fact, it represents a literary triumph of technique and storytelling.

Bataille’s mastery of the metaphor really stands out in this landmark piece of surrealist fiction and it is a shame that some of the themes involved make it a controversial choice for study in the world’s colleges and universities.

This is just the sort of profound work that ought to make it onto the curriculum more often just to show students what the creative imagination is actually capable with relation to language and literary devices.

Bonjour Tristesse: Sex, domestic darkness and isolated scenery

The long trawl through my back catalogue of classic works of fiction led me most recently to Bonjour Tristesse, the most famous novella by Francoise Sagan.

As soon as I began reading, I knew that Sagan’s style was right up my street. The story is very simple: a young woman, her father and his lover leave Paris for a summer holiday and struggle with the ups and downs of their relationships.

That sounds very domestic and unchallenging, but Sagan delivers it beautifully and in such a way that the content feels extremely important. That’s one of the richest things about classic French literature – the ideas have gravity even if the language used to present them is pure and uncomplicated.

Sagan’s work even reminds me of the work of Bataille and other authors who flirted with surrealism with varying degrees of commitment. At the same time, it exudes a similar darkness and broodiness evident in Sylvia Plath, amongst others.

This is a true classic if you like perfectly rendered prose that can be read as lightly or as profoundly as you wish and especially if you like relationship drama, confessional first person narrative and isolated scenery.

A classic and heartbreaking work from Charles Jackson

It seems that many of the books I’ve read of late have been tales of self-destructiveness and drunkenness and none more so than Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend.

This book reads like a confessional narration in spite of its third person perspective thanks to the way the author is capable of getting into his protagonist’s sensitive, chaotic and self-torturing psyche. Jackson does this with such deftness that it makes Don Birnam’s plight all the more heartbreaking.

The humour that finds its way into this squalid story also makes the whole thing more touching – partly because it adds to the realism of the subject matter and lends weight to the themes of pity and shame that drive this human tragedy.

The book is arguably about the attitude of self-destruction that comes as a consequence of being sweet, intelligent and generous, but of expecting too much of oneself and failing to deliver. It’s a truly fantastic read.

Henry Miller on calmer confessional form

Henry Miller is considered one of the most important American writers of the last century and his reputation rests largely on famous works like Tropic of Cancer and its follow-up Tropic of Capricorn.

His unrelenting, shameless and confessional style has been the subject of great controversy and praise over the years, but his novella Quiet Days in Clichy sees him on more tranquil form.

This story could never be described as a rant in the manner of the Tropics, but it nevertheless demonstrates Miller’s deftness in confessional narratives that take in the seedier aspects of the city – in particular, as in Tropic of Cancer, Paris.

The story revolves around two artists and their sordid lives in one of Paris’s less desirable districts, among whores and madmen and constantly on the breadline. This is familiar ground with Miller, but for some reason Clichy feels very different – perhaps for its calmer and more measured approach.