congo inc.: bismarck's testament (koli jean bofane, tr. marjolijn de jager)

Bofane’s short novel is a knowing, ironic take on life in the DRC. At one point he writes: The women dancing showed her what to do, rubbing their rumps and pubic areas against the hard male organs, ostensibly unimpressed; you would have thought it was an Alain Mabanckou novel, and it isn’t clear if Bpfane is being ironic or not. His approach is scattergun and all-embracing. There is a central character, Isookanga, a pygmy who comes to Kinshasa from the deep jungle. He is a kind of Candide, an innocent abroad who gets mixed up in all kinds of trouble, but the novel also includes as characters a warlord and his wife, a lost Chinese immigrants, a Latvian UN peacekeeper and an exploitative preacher, among others. These characters flit through the book, some interacting with Isookanga, others not, all of them contributing to the construction of an overarching vision of a chaotic, vigorous society, at once on the edge of the modern world and at the same time at the heart of it. 

immediacy: or, the style of too late capitalism (anna kornbluh)

Kornbluh’s book is by turns devastating and impenetrable. The latter would be down to this reader’s philosophy deficit; some half-remembered fragments of Hegel and a thirty year old reading of Writing and Difference aren’t going to do the trick here. You will get lost along the way. But you will also stumble into corners of brilliant elucidation. Above all the way in which the author riffs off up to the minute references (Knausgaard, the Safdie Brothers etc) to interrogate where the fuck we are at, culturally, psycho-culturally, as a species etc. I might get this all wrong, but it feels as thought she is constructing a connection between rampant ‘late’ capitalism and its cult of the individual (pace Foucault?) and the vogue for auto-fiction in things literary and immediacy in things audiovisual. Auto-fiction is the attempt to erase the idea of the fiction within fiction, even if the act of writing and ostensibly translating reality into words is of itself an inevitably fictional process. It also encapsulates a society where the individual has become prioritised over the collective. Kornbluh is very effective in the manner she explores the negative aspects of this process and how it betrays some of what might be called the fictional project. Immediacy has to do with a quest to extract the middle man from the audio visual process, a clearly paradoxical endeavour, in keeping with a world where we expect everything, everywhere, all at once. The way in which this restricts the possibilities of depth, or reflection, are self-evident, and noted.

All of this and more is contextualised in rampant theory. Although there was much in the book with which this reader struggled, to see the way it articulated a theory in defence of the collective, against the cult of the individual, which is so clearly an apolitical cult, one with a strong capitalist vibe, was refreshing. 

the night always comes (willy vlautin)

I am not entirely sure how Vlautin’s brief novel reached my library, but it was a perfect accompaniment for the latter part of a transatlantic flight, finished shortly before landing at Heathrow. The novel tells the story of Lynette, a down-on-her-luck thirty year old resident of Portland, who learns that her dream of owning her own home has been put in jeopardy by her mother and determines to do all she can on one fateful night to call in her debts and raise funds for the deposit. Predictably things don’t according to plan. Will Lynette escape everything the night throws at her or will the rainy Portland night destroy her? Whilst the narrative and thematic are generic, there is a warmth to the writer’s portrait of his heroine and a sense of immersion in the geography which helps to keep the read moving. It comes as no surprise for see that the book is already slated to be a movie. It has all the ingredients: a heroine whose desperation drives her to action, the propulsive tension of the night, the unities of time place and action. It’s a hard fast read which is also a love letter to the author’s hometown. 

green border (w&d agnieszka holland, w. gabriela lazarkiewicz-sieczko, maciej pisuk)

Green Border is at once arresting, epic and yet strangely empty. The experience of watching it is visceral: a collection of Syrians and Afghanis are seeking to enter fortress Europe via the Belarus-Poland border, a great wooded area which offers no shelter and is soon revealed to be a trap, as the Polish and Belarus border guards take turns in forcing the immigrants back and forth across the border. They find themselves stuck in a terrible limbo, which is only alleviated by the kind actions of a bunch of activists who head into the forest and offer medical and legal assistance, in so far as they can. The film switches focus at this point, remaining with the Polish activists, as well as recounting the story of a border guard who discovers his humanity. However, this switch seems to dislocate the movie to an extent. The perils faced by the Polish activists, whilst extreme in their own way, cannot compare to what the refugees have had to face and are facing. The activists’ stories feel like a lighter touch, steering us away from the crueller realities the first half of the film has engaged with. Green Border becomes more palatable, it moves away from the obscene. The refugee characters are left half-drawn, or dead. We do not have to suffer with them anymore and we are grateful to the filmmakers for this, but at the same time, it feels as though we have been let off the hook. In many ways Green Border captures the complexities and paradoxes of seeking to make political work within the cinema market place. The demarcated limits of how much empathy is permitted are clearly on display. For all the Europeans’ noble intentions, they almost inevitably sell their own stories, and that of their supposed subjects, short. Meanwhile, those on the wrong side of the fence have to fight for funding from wealthier nations, funding which comes with its own marketplace imperatives as to what will be palatable to the wider target audience the film is supposed to reach. 

sunken lands (gareth rees)

The subtitle of Rees’ waterworld is “A Journey Through Flooded Kingdoms and Lost Worlds”. The author notes how, since his childhood, he has been fascinated by the idea of lost underwater worlds, and in this book, part historical exegesis, part travel guide, part eco-warning, he gets to explore this fascination in more depth. The author skilfully interweaves mythic lore to substantiate his theories about how previous moments in humanity’s history have been impacted by rising sea levels and tsunamis. We are, at the end of the day, the servants of Mother Nature, not her masters, as some from the techno-industrial world would like to believe. Rees ranges across Britain to Italy to the southern states of the USA to make his case and it is a fascinating one. There are times when one longs for his scope to have been less anglo-centric, but there is nevertheless a great deal of scholarship in his integration of mythic history, geological data and gut instinct. 

the memory police (yōko ogawa, tr. stephen snyder)

Several people have brought Ogawa’s novel to my attention. I had anticipated something moderately cute. An unreliable but engaging female narrator, coping with an extraordinary situation, assisted by neutral but sympathetic secondary characters. Set in a world which is removed from ours, but still recognisable and just about plausible. The Memory Police delivers all of this, but then shifts to become one of the more nihilistic texts you might come across. The Memory Police are a totalitarian body who disappear people and objects at will. People flee into hiding to escape them. This much is already reminiscent of Latin American or Arab dictatorships. (On the day of writing there are images of Syrians who have been incarcerated for years finally being released following the fall of Assad.)  The unnamed female narrator, a novelist, takes in her editor, as objects as disparate as flowers and photos are disappeared. The editor clings to his memories. At any point we anticipate that the Memory Police will be confronted, that the world will turn, that the struggle will have been worth it. But what the novel delivers is almost the opposite, in spite of a tsunami and a new ice age. The novel is as mannered as I had imagined it might be, only Ogawa then adds a layer of bleakness that is completely unexpected. 

our share of the night (mariana enriquez, tr. megan mcdowell)

I tend to steer clear of writing here about anything with which I have a personal connection. I wouldn’t say Mariana Enriquez and I are great mates, but we did sit and have a coffee together a few weeks back and there’s the small issue of spending years adapting a short story of hers for the screen, which might become a thing one day, and might not. I actually began reading Our Share of the Night whilst waiting outside the Solis to go to a talk of hers. All of which means to say that I am steeped in mundo Enriquez, one way or another, and cannot claim my normal objectivity, if such a thing exists. I also seem to remember her saying that the novel was not that well received when it was published in the UK. It has taken me over a month to get through it. It’s a weighty text with grand ambitions, which sometimes feels as though it’s going around the houses, of Buenos Aires, La Plata or London. However, going round the houses is also one of its strengths. This is a book that deals with the occult, that deals with spaces or houses that can only be accessed with occult knowledge, and the terrifying things that happen therein. There are moments when Enriquez makes clear her literary and poetic antecedents: she is writing in a tradition of investigation of the world which might exist on the other side of our consciousness. One where the immortals wield a scabrous power, one that the rich and powerful would happily kill to access. 

el jockey (w&d luis ortega, w. fabian casas, rodolfo palacios)

El Jockey, an easily translatable title, is perhaps a marmite film. Stylish, driven as much by its art design as any real sense of narrative, Ortega constructs his movie out of striking images and Roy Andersson-esque sequences. A roomful of female jockeys cavort. A broken figure is swallowed up by a military band. A racehorse races against a Dodge driven by a gaucho. And so ond so forth There is much artistry on display and the film’s opening sequences are arresting, but as it becomes clear that the narrative is essentially a paint-by-numbers job, its charm perhaps begins to wear off. Or perhaps not. Andersson is just one reference here, but just this year I have seen films by Cocteau and Parajanov, where the visual stimuli is prioritised over narrative, or perhaps it might be truer to say that narrative has been employed as a means of transmitting image. Ortega’s film with its use of colour and cliche might be said to belong to this tradition: a feast for the eyes which uses arbitrary narrative connections to bind these images together. At times it feels like advertising: albeit advertising which promotes nothing so much as the director’s personal flair. 

ann veronica (h g wells)

Is Ann Veronica an early example of mansplaining? Or is it a heartfelt intent by a male author to articulate the female viewpoint? H G Wells’ novel seeks to capture the thinking of a young Edwardian woman, in an England emerging from Victoriana into a bustling new London. For anyone who has ever gone to London as an ingenue and wrestled with that beast, there are elements of the story that still ring true. It was never easy to dive into the maelstrom and come out swimming. Ann Veronica gets caught up in the Suffragette movement, goes to prison, comes out unscathed. She has an obstinate courage which fuels her journey, although it never feels as though anything too terrible will happen. As a snapshot of supposedly progressive male thinking it is a fascinating lost text; albeit one that makes you think you ought to be reading more Woolf. 

la chimera (w&d alice rohrwacher, w. carmela covino, marco pettenello)

There has been a lot of hype around La Chimera, which can be a recipe for disappointment. It is a strange, indulgent film, with the central motif being that the protagonist, Arthur, played with a glorious annoyance by Josh O’Connor, is seeking a thread that will reconnect him with his lost lover, even though she is dead. That motif sometimes seemed to stand for the film itself, as it seeks to find a path through the maze of its multiple tones and references. At once winsome, comic and faux-thriller. A film that interrogates our relationship with the past, whilst never wanting to take that interrogation too seriously: more Fellini than Antonioni. Fellini feels like a touchstone for a film with an offbeat humour and a wealth of extravagant but essentially loveable characters. The director’s sister has a cameo role as Spartaco, a dealer in stolen antiquities, and the film isn’t afraid to venture towards the far-fetched, as Arthur’s motley band storms her ship. Yet, somehow or other, all this hangs together. Arthur’s irascible journey as the unexplained gringo with his merry band of brothers becomes a sentimental journey of the Sterne-ian kind, one where emotion and ridicule go hand in hand to create a strange alchemy, aligned with ley lines and divination and the cruel workings of fate.