Year: 2011

HOW TO WIN THE CAINE PRIZE

We had an interesting conversation in the comments on my post about the Caine Prize:

1) Why do so many successful African writers live outside Africa? (are they African writers or ‘African’ writers?)
2) Does the Caine, and the literary world generally, favour stories from Africa about poverty?

I’ve nothing further on 1), but I did a little research on 2), and found that every winning story for the last three years was about poor people, and in particular about poor children. 2011’s winning text is linked to in my previous post, but here’s 2010’s, Stickfighting by Olufemi Terry, and 2009’s, Waiting by EC Osondu

I’ve struggled to get much detail about what the stories from previous years were about, but I think this is certainly an interesting tendency for at least the last three.

I should be very clear here that I don’t mean to bash on the Caine prize. I’m really grateful and glad it exists as a platform for African writers. I’m just wondering what this tendency mean – if stories of the poor are perceived as being the ‘real’ Africa; or if it’s simply chance; or if perhaps the majority of stories submitted were in fact about poverty anyway (which would interesting in itself) . . . .

BABYVILLE by Jane Green

I decided it was time to read some junk.

BABYVILLE tells the story of three friends, and the impact that motherhood has on their lives. It is divided into three sections, each dealing with one woman. The first is Julia, a highflying TV producer who is obssessed with having a baby, convinced that this will save her relationship with boyfriend Mark. The next is Maeve, who has never wanted a baby, until this same Mark impregnates her; and the last is Sam, who actually has a baby, and is not adjusting well to life as a stay-at-home mother.

Initially, I found this really kind of a fun book. The tone is chatty and straightforward, and the pages fly by as in a book for children. Within the first couple of pages, it is entirely clear to the reader that while Mark is a nice man, Julia and he ought not to be together. Brilliant. There is no difficulty as to what is going on; everything is clear and easy to understand. This is much better than crappy old real life, where, at least in my sad experience, 90% of the difficulty of any relationship lies in its definition. (How many debates have we all had, along the lines of, oh god I don’t know, is it A She is the not the One, or B She is the One, and I am too scared to admit it, or C I’m just not that into her, but this fills the time till I meet the One, or D What about that girl I met in a bar one time, maybe she is the One) In the much better world of BABYVILLE there are no such complex questions as to definition; reality is stable and any reasonable person would agree as to its nature.

BABYVILLE is also a hilarious visit to a very different wold of femininity from the one I live in.

Sam is – usually – the laziest of all of them when it comes to superficial appearance. The most makeup she’ll wear is tinted moisturizer, mascara, and pale-pink lipgloss.

I love the suggestion that this is just hardly any makeup at all. Or, when a woman goes into a restaurant in New York, we are proudly told:

She has no qualms about eating on her own

I mean, do people have qualms about eating on their own in restaurants? I didn’t even know that was something one could feel concerned about.

I am sorry to report however that by the end I ceased to find this book very fun. After a while it just started to make me feel a bit dirty. It’s absolutely and entirely predicated on the belief that men and women are very different, and that, foolishly though you may try to avoid it, your biology is your destiny. This is a common, if stupid, idea, but what made it unsettling in this context was the very strong presumption thoughout the book that mothers love their children far more than fathers. This was definitely not true of my mum and dad, and is not true of the mothers and fathers I personally know. I found it a bizarre and even a rather unpleasantly old-fashioned view, which made the whole book, while sugary, leave for me a sour aftertaste.

I just can’t end without including this extract, where a character we are supposed to admire recommends a movie. I have looked carefully at context, and it appears to be unironic:

“It was an incredible piece of cinema,” Chris agrees, “So realistic, it reminded me of Titanic. The realism and the hugeness. What do you think, Sam?”

What do you think, indeed.

LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry

This one is 900 pages, but I promise you it goes down incredibly quick, like a cold glass of water after a long ride across the dusty plains.

As you may suspect from this rather tortured similie, it’s another western novel. Bizarrely, my third this month. I can’t recall when, if ever, I’ve read a novel of the American West, and now I’ve done three in three weeks. This has happened largely by chance, but by about page 700 I was completely ready to chuck it all in and be a cowboy. I am so up for drinking buttermilk, eating sourdough biscuits, and spitting tobacco, it’s not true. Also I want to go round calling people whores like that’s totally acceptable. All I need is a gender change, and for the American West still to exist.

LONESOME DOVE, which won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of a cattle drive which starts in Texas and crosses over 3000 miles to arrive in Montana, establishing the first cattle ranch in that state. It’s a vast novel, and there are many ways you could see it. On one level, it’s a novel of the American landscape, taking us from the heat and dryness of the South to the snow and mountains of the West, and as the group struggle through rivers, across dry plains, and round tiny towns, it’s a monument to the sheer scale of the country. On another level, it’s a kind of elegy for what was lost when the settlers arrived. The leaders of the drive, Gus and Call, were once Texas Rangers, who existed to keep settlers safe from Indians. Now that they have ‘won’ they have time to consider what may have been lost. The book is full of encounters with various small Native American groups trying to find a way to survive. The Rangers, who knew the plains when they were full of buffalo – so full you could ride for a hundred miles along a single herd – are horrified by what seems to be the disappearance of that animal. They pass now roads of bones, the only remnants of these herds.

On another level, and this is the level on which its most engaging, it’s a story of the relationships of the group, from Newt, the yongest, newest hand, to Sean, the new Irish immigrant, to Jake Spoon, the gambler on the run from the law, to Lorena, the prostitute accompanying Jake, to Call, the old Ranger who feels his life’s work is over, and that it has largely been a waste. There’s friendship, and enmity, and personal growth, and death. Here’s my tip: DON’T TRUST MCMURTRY. You might think, oh, this character’s too important to die, that character’s too central to this plot arc to die, he can’t kill them, he won’t kill them. Oh yes he can. OH YES HE WILL.

It’s a very funny novel. Here’s a man who own a tawdry saloon in a tiny town:

Once as a boy he had carried slops in a restaurant in New Orleans that actually used tableclothes, a standard of excellence that haunts him still.

Here’s Call, on the subject of when to ride over into Mexico on raids:

Men he’d ridden with for years were dead and buried, or at least dead, because they’d crossed the river under a full moon.

I think dealing with that inconvenience, people who aren’t men, is very difficult when writing about the profoundly male world of the American West, and it is here that McMurty stumbles. There is a gang rape scene written from the victim’s perspective, that I found very dubious, and some odd observations – here’s one, on a prostitute named Maggie:

Maggie hadn’t had it in her to refuse a man. It was the only reason she was a whore, Call had decided – she just couldn’t turn away any kind of love.

What total nonsense. I had to stop at this point and do a quick Google to find out if this book was written in 1986 or 1886.

However, overall, a great novel. I strongly recommend it, and am currently trying to restrain myself from pouring a glass of buttermilk, whatever that is, and starting right in on the sequel.

Zimbabwean Wins The Caine Prize

As a Zimbabwean literary blog, it is appalling that we have missed out on a major piece of Zimbabwean literary news . . . a Zimbabwean has won the Caine!

The Caine is often described as Africa’s Booker, and is awarded annually to the best short story from the continent. It was last won by a Zimbabwean in 2004 (Brian Chikwava, who went on to write HARARE NORTH.) This makes two Zimbabwean wins in eight years, not bad for a country holding just 10 million of African’s 1 billion people. In short: ha! We may not have an economy but we still have writers! Who needs a stupid economy anyway.

Full text of the story is here.

As a side point, I see NoViolet Bulowayo has lived in the US since 1999, but says she longs to be writing back in Africa. I think it is interesting how many writers defined as African live in the US and UK. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is another one. I suspect this is primarily a question of economics, but I do wonder what effect – if any – this is having on the literature of the continent . . .

Our Monthly Marcel

It’s a new month, and so time for a new monthly Marcel . . .

“But certain favourite roles are played by us so often before the public and rehearsed so carefully when we are alone that we find it easier to refer to their fictitious testimony than to that of a reality which we have almost entirely forgotten.”

Marcel Proust, IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

IF THIS IS A MAN by Primo Levi

Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who spent eleven months in Auschwitz right at the end of the Second World War, before the camp was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.

Six hundred and fifty Italian Jews entered the camp on Levi’s shipment, and only twenty left the camp alive. As you can imagine, his account of his time in the camps is very grim. The inmates were underfed, underclothed, and overworked.

The number assigned to Levi was 174,517, which was tatooed on his arm. This meant he had a very high number; nobody seems to have survived from before about 150,000, and there were only a tiny handful left from before 160,000. Among the most interesting aspects of the book is a discussion of what made it possible for someone to survive: great physical strength, or an ability to get on the good side of the warders, or an eye for every possibility, or a willingness to abandon any moral scruples.

Levi felt that he was clearly not among those who would survive, and prepared himself accordingly. Luckily however his BSc was in Chemistry, and the camp needed chemists, so after an exceedingly bizarre ‘exam’ where a well-dressed German chemist questioned the starving Levi about carbon, he is allowed to enter the lab. This easier work essentially saves his life.

He contracts scarlet fever, and is in the camp hospital when he hears the rumour that everyone in the camp will be marched away, as the Russians are coming and thus the end of the war is near. Levi comments:

The news excited no direct emotion in me. Already for many months I had no longer felt any pain, joy or fear, except in that detached and distant manner characteristic of the Lager, which might be described as conditional: if I still had my former sensitivity, I thought, this would be an extremely moving moment.

Much of the book is recounted in this distant manner, reminding me – perhaps not surprisingly – of Robert Graves First World War memoir, GOODBYE TO ALL THAT; his detachment was so complete he could barely recall any of his four years of war after the first three months – though those three months were quite enough, haunting him for a decade after.

The ten days between the departure of the Germans and the arrival of the Russians are vividly described, as the infectitious diseases patients scour the camp for any remaining food, and die in great numbers from the cold. One man dies and is frozen in the act of digging for potatoes. This is a story so grim as to seem almost unreal, and touchingly, Levi, who lived through it, seems to find it so also.

Today, at this very moment as I sit writing at a table, I myself am not convinced that these things really happened

.

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES by Cormac McCarthy

This is a lovely little story of the Wild West, just at the period when the West was ceasing to be Wild. It is a coming-of-age story tinged with the melancholy of a disappearing world.

It is the 1940s, and a teenager, John Grady, convinces his friend Rawlins to ride away with him from their Texas homes in search of adventure in Mexico. They end up at a ranch, capturing and breaking wild horses, and John Grady falls in love with the rancher’s daughter. Mexican justice is almost as capricious as a Kenyan policeman, and the two are unexpectedly imprisoned, somewhat randomly, and have to fight for days with the other inmates. On their release, Rawlins goes back home, and the scarred John Grady returns to try and win the rancher’s daughter.

The heart of this book, as in any good Western, is the relationship between the two boys, which is sweet, loving and very funny. I am now trying energetically to work “crazy as a shit-house rat” into my everyday conversation. Here is an extract from a section where Rawlins hasn’t seen John Grady for a while:

Bud is that you?
Yeah.
Sum buck, he said. Sum buck. He walked around him to get him in the light and he looked at him as if he were something rare.

You may gather from the lack of conversation markers that this is a literary book, and you’d be right. The evocation of the West is gorgeous:

He pointed his horse at the polestar and rode on and they rode the round moon up out of the east and coyotes yammered and answered back all across the plain to the south from which they’d come

.
(A long literary sentences is however a difficult thing, and can go badly wrong. This one, for example, makes me want to smack someone in the mouth:

The barn was built on the english style and it was sheathed with milled one by fours and painted white and it had a cupola and a weathervane on top of the cupola.

Oh shut up.)

This was a very action-packed book, and the action was so fast paced and brutal that if there has not been a movie made of it I will eat my Stetson. However, I found the book to be really rather sad. This is in part because any novel about growing up is always melancholy, because it always implies a loss, of innocence, or of childhood. In part, also, the book seemed to be mourning a certain kind of lost masculinity. Personally, I don’t think there’s much to mourn there, masculinity and feminity both seeming to me to be primarily a kind of trap – but this book is all about the romance of fulfilling your gender role. Mostly however the sadness comes from the fact that the world of the West is so clearly dying out over the period the book covers.

The car, and modernity, are everywhere in the book. Thus, when John Grady and Rawlins first set out:

The store had nothing in the way of feed. They bought a box of dried oatmeal and paid their bill and went out. John Grady cut the paper drum in two with his knife and they poured the oatmeal into a couple of hubcaps and sat on the picnic table and smoked while the horses ate.

And at the end of the book:

He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west across the evening land and the small desert birds flew chittering among the dry bracken and horse and rider passed on and their long shadows passed in tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come.

OUT OF AFRICA by Karen Blixen

I have reviewed this for Africa Book Club – here it is! I will only say, it is not at all like the movie.

If you aren’t going to click through, let me leave you with this interesting little extract:

The Elite Of Bournemouth

I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long ruins had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service of coming over and helping her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, a the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.

Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say that although he had once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now, practised to the elite of Bournemouth.

PHINEAS FINN by Anthony Trollope

The only thing better than a giant Victorian novel is a series of giant Victorian novels, and that’s what Trollope has graciously given the world in his Palliser series.

I read the first one earlier this year (here), and decided to start on this one, the second in the series, when my real life was all getting to be too much for me. It’s like an 800 page holiday. (Perhaps I should rename this blog A Page A Day Keeps The Psychosis Away?)

Phineas Finn is sent to London by his father, an Irish doctor, to become a lawyer. He’s not much of a student, but is handsome and fun, and somehow, in a triumph of social skills and appearance over probability, finds himself standing for parliament. This is crazy, as at that time parliament did not pay a wage, and was thus usually the preserve of the independently wealthy. Phineas decides to take the risk, and is fairly successful, eventually securing a government post that pays a wage. On the way, he falls in and out of love with a Lady Laura, and a Miss Violet, but eventually returns to his first love, Mary, at home in Ireland. Unfortunately Mary has no money, and when Phineas feels he has to give up his government post as he can no longer vote with the government on the subject of Irish tenant rights, he has to give up London and return to Ireland to try at last and make a career as a lawyer.

As always with Trollope, this is an engaging and complex story, and you come to care for Phineas and relate to the painful maturing process of his twenties. This is the more so because you know you have four novels to go, in which Phineas will reappear in various ways, probably right up to old age. One of the delights of this second novel is in fact meeting again characters frm the first one, and even one character from Trollope’s Barchester novels, a series I read in those dark and miserable days before this blog.

I found the multiple love affairs a bit unlikely, and the politics sometimes a drag, but I would say I was most entertained for at least 700 of the 800 pages. I leave you with a little bit of unexpected Trollopian wisdom on, of all things, comparing British and American politics:

It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear other limb from limb.

If only the Tea Party were reading Trollope!

FEVER PITCH by Nick Hornby

Everybody has embarrassing hang-ups. Most people do not talk about these hang-ups, and certainly most people do not write books about them, so I feel Nick Hornby is to be applauded for the horrible honesty which he brings to his autobiographical book, FEVER PITCH, in which he discusses his relationship with football.

Nick Hornby likes football. He likes football a lot. More than he should really be admitting.

His obsession began when he was taken to a football match by his father, after his parents’ divorce, and this is where the book begins. Hornby theorizes that he may have become so involved with football at that time in an attempt to bond with his father, or to model masculine behaviour, now he lived only with women. This sounds to me like the sort of ‘explanation’ you get from books such as ROOTS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS FOR DUMMIES, but whatever the reasons for his obsession, it came to dominate his life.

Hornby went to Cambridge, where he did not work very hard, and then found himself to be rather lost for a while, working at various times as an administrator, and as a teacher. After losing his first serious girlfriend, he struggled to maintain a relationship. He attended the matches of his team, Arsenal, religiously, and in many ways lived through their successes and failures, more than his own. He never, ever, misses a match, even when very ill, and is emotionally bound up in their successes and failures to an extent that is basically creepy. Thus for example, when Arsenal wins some big championship (I don’t know which, I’m sorry, I found the straight football bits boring) he actually begins to turn his own life around, eventually becoming a writer.

In addition to being rather sad, for Hornby clearly struggles very painfully to sort out his life, the book is in many ways very funny. Thus, discussing a man he sees who has died of a heart attack immediately after a match, he comments: ‘It worries me, the prospect of dying in mid-season like that,’ and continues, ‘The whole point about death, metaphorically speaking, is that it is almost bound to occur before the major trophies have been awarded.’

So a painfully honest, strangely intimate, and very funny book, about what it means to love something more than you should.