the volunteer (salvatore scibona)

The Volunteer is a big American novel. Why the North Americans seem so much more adept at writing on a grander scale than the British over the course of the past century or so is a great topic for a PhD. Suffice it to say that a host of writers from that continent seem prepared and permitted to write on a scale that encompasses and investigates the sweep of history. The comparison that most readily springs to mind with Scibona’s novel is DeLillo. There’s a willingness to both make surprising narrative shifts and build towards a grandstand scene which echoes a novel like Underworld. Having said that, the voice is distinctly his own, a voice that seems to hunt the unrevealed truths of history in corners where no-one else has previously thought to look. 

There is, it might be said, an exception to this, which is when the volunteer of the title, Volie Frade, participates in the Vietnam war, in a bravura piece of writing. However, even Scibona’s Vietnam is covert, as Frade is captured whilst on unofficial duty in Cambodia, during a military action which officially doesn’t exist. Frade, whose name is changed as he reinvents himself, is one of three orphans in the novel. This sense of an absence of roots appears to contribute to the perpetration of a national violence, a violence whose rationale has more to do with genetic discord than political need. A violence which is born of a sense of being dislocated. Scibona follows a thread which leads from the Second World War through to Vietnam, through to the imperial Middle Eastern adventures of the twentieth century and could perhaps lead, as in the literature of Saunders, to a form of militaristic despair which turns back in on itself, something which was threatened during the rump reign of Trump.  

The author explores these themes, which also take in the idea of destiny, the failure of sixties counter culture and the shimmering persistence of Christianity as a factor in modern society, in pages of sometimes dense, sinuous prose. He’s never scared of heading off into a digression which might cast light on his story that even he is unclear about (the German refugee, the Dutch divorcee). At times one wonders where this is all headed, and as a writer he seems enamoured of the non-connections, a resistance to the insistent logic of story, as characters refuse to meet, or remain in the dark, or simply forget about things that once upon a time seemed of transcendental importance. This is what a novel of this scale can afford to do; to recognise that life is as many blind alleys as it is roman roads. That the other lives characters (such as ourselves) might have lived are always around the corner, a corner not taken. 

orinooko (aphra behn)

Behn’s Orinooko is one of the more extraordinary texts from the canon of English literature. In part because of its evident contemporary ordinariness. Just another story about a tragic hero. The fact that the eponymous tragic hero is a slave in a British colony in the Americas only appears, retrospectively, remarkable. At the time, for all its exotic context, it belonged to a recognisable literary trope. Now we can read it and think: ‘How could a female author in the late seventeenth century be writing about globalisation and slavery, with a black African protagonist?’ 

The novel occurs in both West Africa and Suriname, which was a British colony before it was ceded to the Dutch in exchange for New Amsterdam. According to Janet Todd’s excellent introduction, Behn had travelled to Suriname. The novel employs the authorial voice as the narrator, although clearly it’s not known to what extent Behn was recounting actual events or inventing them. The section in West Africa, which she hadn’t visited, certainly feels more sketchy, less rigorous in the writing, as it sets up the background for Orinooko falling in love with Imoinda and his subsequent betrayal and capture by an English slaver who ships him to Suriname to be sold.

The issue of slavery is central to the book, but dealt with in a complicated fashion. Firstly, Behn seems to suggest that slavery was endemic to West African culture before it became part of European culture. Next, the moral argument against slavery appears to be not so much that it enslaved individuals, but that it enslaved particular noble individuals who were put on this earth for greater things. A kind of Nietzschean variation. Whilst the fate of the other slaves, both in Suriname and Africa doesn’t appear to bother Behn particular, the fate of Orinooko and Imoinda is what grants them their tragic destiny, elevating Orinooko onto another moral sphere altogether, where the murder of his beloved becomes an honourable act. Which could be a twist on Othello, a sly reading of alternative models of morality to the rigid Judeo-Chrisitan one. Lastly, there is the issue of the actual physical state of slavery itself. Behn’s description of Orinooko’s life in Suriname feels more like a depiction of someone in an open jail than in the state of slavery as it has been depicted. The narrator herself becomes friends with Orinooko, who hunts and swims and generally hangs out with his oppressors as though he’s not only one of the gang, but the most valued member of that gang. 

What this depiction does is it elevates the concept of freedom and individual liberty. Looking at the ravages of war, plague and fire that 17th century England had endured, the description of Orinooko’s existence in Suriname seems almost idyllic. (Todd notes that Behn has been criticised for painting an idealised, Edenic vision of Suriname which ignored mosquitos, disease, humidity, etcetera). However, rather than enjoy this idyllic life and the princely privileges he is granted. Orinooko insists on rebelling. Hence we have the first depiction that I know of in British fiction of a slave revolt and the subsequent punitive reaction taken by the capitalists/ slave owners towards the revolt’s leader, Orinooko. Orinooko is brought down precisely because of his princely demeanour which values an elevated notion of liberty above and beyond anything else. As such, Orinooko feels like the forerunner of an increasingly individualistic trend in Western culture. One which it could be argued leads towards the existentialists or even the diverse cultural reactions to the current crisis around the globe, (where some countries have chosen to prioritise liberty/ freedom and others have engaged in a more draconian battle against the plague), a globe whose actual shape and geography was only just coming to be defined at the time Behn was writing. 

mano de obra (w&d david zonana)

There was a very successful movie last year called Parasite, which I haven’t managed to see. If it’s half as good as Mano de Obra, which embraces similar themes, then it will have deserved its plaudits. 

Mano de Obra tells the story of a Mexican labourer, Francisco, who’s working on a luxury home for a rich man. The employees are treated with the kind of short shrift that is typical of contemporary class structures the world over. The house nears completion, and Francisco, embittered by what’s happened to his brother, decides to take drastic action, moving in and taking over the house. So far, perhaps so predictable. Shots of Francisco in the jacuzzi or the luxurious bed, all of which is in complete contrast to his previous dwellings which flooded whenever in rained. He stats to hatch a plan to claim the house, getting people from his old barrio to move in. Suddenly the house is full of people of all ages, not to mention chickens. But something happens to Francisco. Power corrupts and he starts to act like a lord. His housemates rebel, especially when legal eviction letters start to arrive. 

Zonana tells his tale with a dry economy. The second half of the film takes place in the same location, the luxury house which Francisco has claimed. The way in which the narrative gradually unfurls to give a telling portrayal not just of modern day Mexico, but also of the class struggles which persist and trap around the globe, is masterly.

This was the last film we saw in Cinemateca before its doors closed once again before Christmas, 2020. As yet there’s no sign of the cinema reopening. One is forced to recall yet again how important the process of going to the cinema is; how much it nourishes, how much it can expand one’s horizons. One of the saddest aspects of the twenty first century has been the increased primacy of the small screen over the large one. Not so much for aesthetic reasons (the detail that the large screen captures); but because the action of watching cinema is always fiercer as a social commitment, as a way of participating within both the local and the global environment. Cinemateca will be back; not a day too soon. 

there there (tommy orange)

take 1

Orange delves into the untold story of the contemporary native American experience, giving a voice to the voiceless. In so doing he addresses the issues of alcoholism, displacement, alienation, the desperate bid to preserve and reconnect with roots. It’s a trenchant vision which isn’t afraid of incurring tragedy in order to make its case. Not all endings are happy in the USA. The varied range of characters illustrate this narrative from multiple perspectives, granting access to the reader to the realities of post-colonial discourse. 

take 2

There There is another in what would appear to be an evolving tradition of fractured narratives with multiple narrators which in theory offers a wide-ranging fictional overview of a marginal experience. Off the top of my head two recent novels spring to mind, Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Power’s The Overstory. The writing is always accessible, the storytelling direct. However, this narrative approach also runs the risk of reducing the immersive potency of the novel as a medium to communicate alternative experience. No sooner has the reader begun to engage and immerse with one character than they are whisked onto the next. The effect is one of horizontality at the expense of verticality. At times it felt as though we were skating over the surface of these lives, their potential for the tragic or the transcendent always held at one remove. The easy read betraying the easy out, like a netflix package holiday.  

chico ventana también quisiera tener un submarino (w&d alex piperno)

Blend the longeurs of Uru-cine with a dash of Apitchatpong and a soupçon of Doctor Who and you end up with something like Chico Ventana. The tardis in this instance being a squat concrete construction which appears in the Philippines, disconcerting a small village. Meanwhile, Chico is a crewman on a cruise ship off the coast of Patagonia, and Elsa is leading a banal life in my friend’s flat in Montevideo. Somehow all these worlds are connected by a couple of portals (rather than portholes). Why they are connected, to what end, remains opaque. Although, as Snr Amato observed, there’s clearly a Globalisation/ Butterfly Effect subtext. The actions in the Philippine village will determine what happens to the cruise ship which in turn will cause a minor flood in my friend’s flat. Everything connects.

The film felt at its strongest when it observed with a certain acidity other parallel lives, those of the tourists aboard the cruise ship, urged to take a photo of a whale, or dance in the shadow of glaciers. At this point it felt as though there was a subtext to the subtext, something the Montevidean episode might have benefitted from. Likewise the portrayal of the Philippine village, with its gory superstitions, felt slightly done by numbers, for all the charm of the exotic. There’s something about Chico Ventana which gives it the feel of a greater story trying to break out of what ends up being a somewhat solipsistic one, even down to the closing images which justify the film’s extravagant title. 

The fact that large swathes of the film take place in my friend Chamorro’s old flat, where we sat and edited and even filmed once, added another level of parallelismo to a story seeking to emphasise the arbitrary connections that may exist in the world. Which also only helped to emphasise the way in which life in Montevideo constantly teeters on the brink of the surreal, a city where fact and fiction are always closer than you might think. 

platform capitalism (nick srnicek)

Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism is a pithy breakdown of trends in capitalism, the internet and the shape of the future. There are other books which tackle these subjects in more detail, but Srnicek’s is a straightforward overview which is great for the layman, like myself. It pinpoints the development of internet platforms (the usual suspects) and explains how a website which originally set out to sell books is now selling just about everything and probably taking your temperature at the same time. The book details the varied platforms breaking them down into five groups: Cloud; Advertising; Industrial; Product and Lean, before going on to outline how, as the behemoths of the internet struggle for dominance, these platforms begin to elide and overlap. The book is also very astute in explaining how a surplus of capital with nowhere to go has been allocated to the development of these platforms. The Victorians used surplus capital to build railways and sewers; the 21st century builds ever more complex internet architecture. Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is undoubtably more extensive in its description of the way in which advertising revenue drove the growth of Google and Facebook, but I have to confess it was too detailed for me. Srnicek isn’t trying to write a history of the internet, he’s giving a succinct breakdown of where we are now in a process that is evolving so rapidly, affecting the way in which each and every one of us lives, that the general public inevitably lag behind any capacity to grasp how the earth is moving under our feet. The only point perhaps worth noting is that the book, originally published in 2017, could probably do with an update already, above all in this year where our on-line existence has evolved to compensate for the decline in our off-line access.

la gomera (w&d corneliu porumboiu)

The Romanian new wave used to be a thing. Unorthodox, edgy cinema crafted by the post-Ceaucescu generation. Porumboiu along with Mungiu, Nemescu and others blazing a trail, instigating that rare occurrence of the flourishing of an urgent, national cinema. Where do these filmmakers head when the energy that drove that original wave has burnt out? In the case of Porumboiu’s La Gomera it turns out to be Singapore via the Canary Islands. Straightaway this betrays the fact that this is an international co-pro, with a budget to match. The opening of the film has the jaundiced cop, Cristi, arrive on the island of La Gomera to the backdrop of Iggy Pop’s Passenger. It’s a vigorous, confident opening, which is embellished by the charismatic Catrinel Marlon as femme fatale, Gilda. Cristi is soon being given lessons by the local gangsters in the Canary Island’s secret whistling language, which allows you to communicate via articulated whistles. This might have been a sly comment on contemporary communication practices, analogue versus digital, but the idea doesn’t really go anywhere, and neither does the film, which, for all its charm, is blighted by the curse of the comedy crime caper syndrome. Various criminals in Bucharest and La Gomera are pursued by various cops, most of them crooked. The comings and goings become less and less plausible and the energy of the opening is dissipated. It feels, with reference to the director’s earlier work, and the place he was coming from, as though the intellectual-social-political drive which fuelled his former cinema has been lost. Porumboiu is now a jobbing Euro-director. It’s not a bad job, someone’s got to do it, but the focus has gone, we’re now in strictly commercial territory, a place where the light no longer burns as bright. 

the piano teacher (elfriede jelinek, tr. joachim neugroschel)

I finished the Piano Teacher, yesterday, Christmas day. As anyone who has read the book can testify, it’s a gruelling read. One that gathers pace as the book unfolds, measured out in long scenes of increasing psychological and physical horror, told in a distanced, ironic tone which one suspects never quite translates, no matter how effective Joachim Neugroschel’s English version. The memory of Haneke’s film and Huppert lingers in the back of the mind throughout. In a book where the issue of physicality is so potent, the image of Huppert’s austere, skinny attractiveness perhaps works against the depiction of Erika in the novel. Huppert is on the cover, she’s become the Piano Teacher. But the piano teacher existed before Huppert claimed her. 

The brutality of the novel generates a classic horror reaction. The more we are shocked, the more we want to read on. The first half of the novel is more mundane. Erika Kohut observes, she lives on the edge of the world. We share her observations, her consciousness. It’s only as she starts to engage with the sub-Nazi youth, Walter Klemmer, that things move from the conceptual to the actual. Contemplated inflicted pain is not the same as actual inflicted pain. Contemplated rejection is not the same as actual rejection. The novel explores the gap between the workings of the mind and the workings of the world; something that is all the more pertinent in a time where the conceptual warriors are given a platform in the  virtual world to wage their conceptual battles or indulge their conceptual perversions. 

Yet, beyond the terror the book inspires, why is this novel so compelling? It contains the perversity of Maldoror. The cruelty of Bataille. Many might question its morbid fascination with the dark side. Whilst the novel depicts the abuse of a woman in harrowing detail, it’s hard to view it as a feminist tract, when Erika’s mother is also her psychological oppressor. What perhaps marks the novel out is the courage with which it converts Erika into a tragic heroine not of someone else’s abuse narrative, but her own transgression. Erika, who is more than capable of committing a cruel action herself, is hoisted on her own petard. She inhabits a world whose atomisation, to use a phrase, means that her mind, brilliant as it is, turns and twists inwards, in the process catching her in a trap of its own making. The relentless way in which the author traces this process seems to articulate a literary courage on her part. Jelinek is prepared to reveal those things we would rather not acknowledge exist. The terrible contradictions of the human heart. Society is constructed on a basis of these elemental yearnings, which acquire shape in fantasies which have veered so far off beam that when they come to be realised, they destroy the subject entirely. The reason for the Piano Teacher’s power as a novel is that it mercilessly tears back the veil and shows the Western world in all its hideous deformity. Where we think we perceive beauty, there actually hides savagery. Behind the pretty child in the advertising poster, there lurks a grinning skull.